Meet Kim Reed

Attorney At Law, Hogan & Hartson L.L.P.

Contact Kimberly D. Reed

Hogan & Hartson LLP 555 Thirteenth St., NW Washington, DC 20004

p: 202.637.6573 F: 202.637.5910 E: [email protected] W: www.hhlaw.com

Kim Reed is an international business lawyer with the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. She is based out of the firm’s Washington, DC and Moscow, Russia offices. During 2008, Kim was on leave from the firm in order to lead the Obama presidential campaign’s overseas operations as Senior Advisor on Americans Abroad. As the campaign’s chief liaison with the seven to ten million Americans living overseas, Kim spearheaded the creation of the first-ever field operations of a US presidential campaign internationally and supervised all overseas campaign employees and thousands of US citizen volunteers in 70+ countries. She served on the Advance Team for then-Senator Obama’s historic trip to Berlin, Germany, and also traveled on behalf of the Obama campaign to India, China, France, Italy, Hungary and Canada.

Having returned to Hogan & Hartson after the election, Kim specializes in complex mergers & acquisitions, foreign investment, and infrastructure projects. Although her practice emphasizes Russia and the countries of the former Soviet bloc, she has also worked on deals in Asia, Australia, Western Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. Kim has a large and active pro bono practice, donating about 600 hours annually, free of charge, to NGO/nonprofit clients in sectors such as human rights, free and fair elections, environmental conservancy, education, mentorship for Russian orphans, critically ill children, international women’s rights, public interest law, religious freedom, service to the poor, and development of the NGO sector in Russia. She was the recipient of the first-ever Russian Pro Bono Award in 2008.

Kim grew up in rural Virginia and graduated from Duke University (where she was one of the original founders of “Krzyzewskiville”, the legendary basketball team-inspired tent village) and the University of Virginia Law School, where she was Class President, Executive Editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law, and an avid competitive softball player. After law school, she practiced litigation in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, worked briefly at the White House Communications Office during the first Clinton Administration, and then spent six years as Assistant Dean and Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she taught Nonprofit Law & Management. In 2000, she moved to Warsaw, Poland, joining Hogan & Hartson’s international corporate law practice, and from there moved to Moscow in 2004, where she lived until early 2008.

Kim is a Board Member of the Public Interest Law Institute, the Network of East-West Women, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Duke University Women’s Forum, and several other non-profit organizations, and she is a current member of the Democratic Party’s Advisory Council and the Democratic Party Women’s Leadership Forum. She is also the founder of the Talizman Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Warsaw, Poland, which, over the last seven years, has distributed millions of dollars in clothing, medical supplies, toiletries and cleaning supplies, school books, and other basic necessities to orphanages, homes for the mentally and physically handicapped, needy foster families, homeless shelters, and homes for the poor elderly in rural parts of Poland. Talizman is a regular partner of the National Ski Areas Association’s “Sharing Warmth Around the Globe” project, which has donated over 15,000 winter coats and other cold-weather wear to Talizman for distribution to Talizman’s target groups.

Kim lives in Potomac, Maryland with her husband and two young children. She is an avid traveler, having visited more than 60 countries, and Duke basketball fan.

Meet Robert Mulverhill

President, iSeis

Contact Robert Mulverhill

iSeis 1128 Grant Street, Ste. 103 Denver, CO 80203

P: 303.884.1157 E: [email protected]

Mr. Mulverhill has successfully constructed and led a number of dynamic business enterprises in the United States, Europe and Asia. His extensive experience includes executive leadership positions as CEO, President, COO, VP and MD, as well as numerous senior management positions.

Robert brings expansive experience in executive management, strategic business development, global sales and marketing, product development and market launch, operations and finance with particular expertise in managing mature and emerging companies operating in rapidly changing environments; environments of highly competitive, fast moving transactional and technology based businesses where the ability to manage, control and achieve results are imperative.

Mr. Mulverhill is President and CEO of iSeis, a global seismic equipment and services company and Chairman of DeltaGeophysical LLC an oil and gas equipment trading company. Robert was founding President and CEO of Ascend Geophysical, Inc. He has also been President and CEO of a fluid management and controls company (successfully acquired) and a proprietary digital imaging and software company (IPO and successfully acquired).

Robert has also served as COO and Managing Director of a British/Asian manufacturing consortium maintaining residence in London, Beijing and Bangkok. He launched his corporate career and built extensive operational, sales and program management skills during his time with Honeywell Corporation. Mr. Mulverhill is recognized for his extensive international work, collaboration and strategic development within China and Eastern European nations, and is often called upon to advise and assist both industry and governmental agencies.

Mr. Mulverhill has served as director, advisor and consultant to various companies and agencies in the US, Europe and Asia. He possesses an exceptional record in leading challenging corporate transactions, including mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, equity financing, buy-outs and enterprise expansion. He has successfully managed multiple global businesses and built key account relationship including BP, Shell, Exxon, CNPC/BGP, Halliburton, IBM, GE, Boeing, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Samsung, P & G, Pfizer and Siemens A.G.

Meet Adam P. Cohen

CH2M HILL, Vice President, Enterprise Performance Excellence

Contact Adam P. Cohen

9191 South Jamaica Street Englewood, CO 80112

p: 1.888.CH2M.HILL e: [email protected]

Adam P. Cohen is Vice President and Director of Enterprise Performance Excellence for CH2M HILL, a global project delivery company with revenues of more than $6 billion and 25,000 employees. Fortune named CH2M HILL to the prestigious 100 Best Companies to Work For listing in 2003, 2006, and 2008; and America’s Most Admired Companies for the last 6 years.

In his 19-year career with the firm, he has served in various roles involving training, organizational development, strategic planning, process improvement, quality management, marketing, and technical publications. His client work spans the water, transportation, energy and environment, and industrial sectors.

So how does an English Language & Literature major end up celebrating 19 years of employment with global engineering, construction, and operations firm CH2M HILL? And, how does this experience translate into a calling to improve company operations, service to customers, and employee engagement?

CH2M HILL acquired an Evanston, Illinois-based transportation engineering firm in 1989, and opened the “Chicago office” on the research campus of Northwestern University. Less than a year after graduation from the University of Michigan, Cohen was the first new CH2M HILL employee hired to join the existing team. He applied his English degree as a technical publications and editing specialist, producing technical reports and marketing materials for almost 3 years.

In 1993, with the pull of Colorado luring him home, he joined OMI, a fully owned subsidiary unit of CH2M HILL. Just months into his employment with OMI, he attended an introductory training session of OMI’s Obsessed With Quality process. The course taught employees about the culture of quality, customer service, teamwork, process improvement and statistical process control, and employee empowerment. In 1995, Cohen became a “focus team leader” for one element of OMI’s implementation of the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award criteria. He served in this role and as co-leader of Team OMI, driving companywide improvements and leading production of three official Baldrige Award applications.

OMI received the Baldrige Award in 2000 as the first-ever Colorado recipient. (Since joined as Baldrige Award Recipients by the UNC Monfort College of Business and, this year, Poudre Valley Health System.) He became a Quality Coach for OMI in 1999-2000, then Quality Director for OMI in 2003 until 2006 when he returned to CH2M HILL’s corporate ranks in a companywide quality role.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the non-profit Colorado Performance Excellence (CPEx), a state-level Baldrige-based performance excellence program. He served as Board President in 2004 and 2005, and Vice President in 2003. Recently “retiring” as the Lead Judge for the CPEx awards program after 4 years, he will return to a role as an Examiner for the state award in 2009.

Cohen also is engaged as an Advisor to the Monfort College of Business Institute for Performance Excellence at the University of Northern Colorado. He co-chaired the Baldrige Award Recipients Consortium, a national network of Baldrige Award Recipient organizations, in 2001 and 2002.

Cohen has been a guest on several radio programs and internet radio station Voice America, and has made keynote and workshop presentations to more than 5,000 people. He is certified by the American Society for Quality as a Manager of Quality and Organizational Excellence, and Quality Improvement Associate.

Reflections Through A Lens

ICOSA was started because our Publisher saw the downturn in the economy as an opportunity for all of us to establish collaborative efforts to make things better across industries and organizations - domestically and globally. Using stories of successful collaborative efforts, we hoped to spark dialogue and move people to action, through personal effort, donations, or other means. Recently, I met with a group of readers who were outraged by a story that appeared in ICOSA’s November/December 2008 Social Responsibility issue. These readers felt that our “lens” had been focused on the wrong thing. In their opinion, one of the companies we highlighted as an example of effective collaboration was, in their opinion, not at all collaborative or socially responsible. Instead of a model of how to build successful collaborative relationships through community development, they saw a culprit of harmful business practices. After vigorous discussion, I agreed to reflect on my responsibilities as an editor, if they would consider their individual and collective roles, in the complicit nature of the way things are.

I went on to share reflections on that issue through my “lens.” And, although they were disturbed by my actions, I reminded them that we are all complicit participants in extractive industries – especially if we heat our homes, drive a car, use a computer, or wear shoes. Everything we touch or do is either mined or grown – it is just the “nature of the beast.” I explained that it is a “lens” that sometimes gets lost in the conversation. A “lens” that sometimes is never considered.

In this issue, we have tried to compile stories that address both sides of the conversation. We expect, and hope for, debate and conversation that considers the “voice” of the author. There will be readers that contend that we have not been fair – but is that the point? I hope that there are pieces of each of the articles in this issue of ICOSA that push readers to reflect on opinions and predisposed judgments to consider another point of view. Shouldn’t that be the point?

As I reflect on my actions while compiling this issue, I know that I don’t agree with everything in this issue. NO – not everything is based on my opinion. As I reflect on my actions, my “lens” has opened to more fully consider the opinions of others. As I reflect on my actions, I am excited that someone is reading this magazine and thinking critically about its content – which is one of my goals! As I reflect on my actions, I know that we, here at ICOSA, are receptive to constructive criticism – it’s the only way we get better. As I reflect on my actions, I have recognized that meeting in the middle and considering someone else’s “lens” is a concept difficult to conceive for ideologues on any side of a debate.

As you read this issue on Sustainable Development: Energy and the Environment, I hope that you will consider the “lens” with which you read and remind yourself of other “lenses” from which to think critically about the stories.

The only way that we can begin to move toward a stronger, more collaborative nation, is to consider the “lens” through which we look as we reflect on our role in moving this nation, and the world, forward.

Our Nation's Energy And Economic Future

Wind Energy’s Role

Energy prices, supply uncertainties, and environmental concerns are driving the United States to rethink its energy mix and develop diverse sources of clean, renewable energy. In January 2009, President Barack Obama called for the expanded use of renewable energy in his inaugural address to meet the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. The administration has a comprehensive plan to invest in alternative and renewable energy that will help end our addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis, and create millions of new jobs.

Wind energy is not only one of our nation’s most abundant renewable energy resources, it’s the fastest growing source of new generation. In 2008, the U.S. wind energy industry broke a global record by installing 8,358 megawatts (MW) of new capacity, demonstrating a 50% growth rate that brought our nation’s total wind energy capacity to 25,170 MW. The United States now claims the largest wind energy capacity in the world, taking the lead from Germany, which had 23,903 MW at the end of 2008.In the past, countries such as Germany, Denmark, and Spain have led the world’s production of wind energy, but according to the American Wind Energy Association, North America’s 2008 installations nearly tied all of Europe’s which installed about 8,900 MW in 2008, and Asia followed closely with 8,600 MW. China doubled its installed capacity by adding about 6,300 MW to reach a total of 12,200 MW.

The rapid expansion of wind energy development around the world is clearly demonstrating the potential for this clean renewable resource to become a major player in the field of global electric generation sources. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the U.S. wind energy capacity now produces enough electricity to power approximately 7 million households while avoiding nearly 44 million tons of carbon emissions the U.S. wind energy capacity now produces enough electricity to power approximately 7 million households while avoiding nearly 44 million tons of carbon emissions the U.S. wind energy capacity now produces enough electricity to power approximately 7 million households while avoiding nearly 44 million tons of carbon emissions - that’s equivalent to taking more than 7 million cars off the road. Although that sounds like a lot of electricity, wind energy still provides for only 2% of our nation’s electricity requirements. The vision of the wind industry in the United States and Europe is to increase wind’s fraction of the electrical energy mix to more than 20% within the next two decades. In the United States, that would mean increasing the wind energy capacity from a little more than 25,000 MW (25 gigawatts [GW]) to 305 GW.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in conjunction with AWEA, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Black & Veatch undertook a study to explore the possibility of producing 20% of the nation’s electricity using wind energy. According to the report, achieving 20% wind energy by 2030 could help address climate change by reducing electric sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 825 million metric tons (25% of the electric utility sector CO2 emissions if no new wind is installed by 2030), and it will enhance our nation’s energy security by diversifying our electricity portfolio as wind energy is an indigenous energy source with stable prices not subject to fuel volatility.

Increasing our nation’s wind generation could also boost local rural economies and contribute to significant growth in manufacturing and the industry supply chain. Rural economies will benefit from a substantial increase in land use payments, tax benefits and the number of well-paying jobs created by the wind energy manufacturing, construction, and maintenance industries. According to AWEA, the wind energy industry channeled approximately $17 billion into the U.S. economy in 2008, employed about 85,000 workers, and opened or announced more than 55 wind equipment manufacturing facilities.

Although the initial capital costs of implementing the 20% wind scenario would be higher than other generation sources, according to the report, wind energy offers lower ongoing energy costs than conventional generation power plants for operations, maintenance, and fuel. The 20% scenario could require an incremental investment of as little as $43 billion (net present value) more than a baseline no-new-wind scenario. This would represent less than 0.06 cent (six one-hundredths of 1 cent) per kilowatt-hour of total generation by 2030, or roughly 50 cents per month per household.

The Wind Energy Deployment System model developed at NREL was used to estimate some of the important consequences associated with producing 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind technology by 2030. This generation capacity expansion model selects from electricity generation technologies that include pulverized coal plants, combined cycle natural gas plants, combustion turbine natural gas plants, nuclear plants, and wind technology to meet projected demand in future years. Technology cost and performance projections, as well as transmission operation and expansion costs, are assumed. This study demonstrates that producing 20% of the nation’s projected electricity demand in 2030 from wind technology is technically feasible, not cost-prohibitive, and provides benefits in the forms of carbon emission reductions, natural gas, and water savings.

Although the report concludes that achieving the 20% wind scenario is technically achievable, it also states that this growth will require enhanced transmission infrastructure, streamlined siting and permitting regimes, improved reliability and operability of wind systems, and increased U.S. wind manufacturing capacity. Of these challenges, enhancing the transmission infrastructure and integrating a variable, weather-driven resource into our nation’s transmission grid present two of the most difficult barriers to dramatically increasing wind energy development.

Transmission is a key energy infrastructure element critical to tapping our national wind resource and moving electricity to market, much as the interstate highway system does for the nation’s transportation needs. Much of the nation’s best wind resources cannot be tapped to meet our increasing energy demands without new transmission system capacity. The development of new transmission is challenged by many regulatory, jurisdictional siting, and cost allocation barriers. The development of new transmission corridors requires the coordination of many different organizations and groups from the federal, regional, state, and local levels. Upgrading the nation’s transmission system, like upgrading the interstate highway system, will have substantial costs and will cross many organizational boundaries.

The natural variability of the wind resource also presents challenges to grid system operators and planners with regard to managing regulation, load following, scheduling, line voltage, and reserves. While the current level of wind penetration in the United States and around the world has provided substantial experience for successful grid operations with wind power, many grid operators need to gain a better understanding of the impacts of wind on the utility grid before they can feel comfortable increasing the percentage of wind in their systems’ energy portfolios.

To meet these challenges, the DOE Wind Energy Program is conducting several regional high-wind-penetration studies that will expand on existing knowledge and provide information on the operating impacts and costs of wind, the benefits of geographical diversity and balancing area cooperation to manage variability, and the role and value of forecasting.

Power system operators may be able to significantly reduce the uncertainty of wind output by using wind forecasts that incorporate meteorological data to predict wind power production. In Colorado, DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is working with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Xcel Energy to develop improved models that will characterize wind resources and help utilities better forecast the wind so that they can predict how much electricity their wind turbines will generate during a given period of time.

The wind resource characterization models used for forecasting will also help system operators assess availability of transmission. To help coordinate transmission planning efforts, the program is working with state and federal energy offices as well as regional organizations and utilities to support appropriate representation of wind energy characteristics and opportunities in the energy infrastructure planning processes underway across the nation.

Wind forecasts are derived from weather prediction models. In addition to helping the wind industry mitigate integration and transmission issues, the Wind Energy Program is conducting R&D that will advance the technology and provide information to help increase its acceptance. To advance wind energy technology, the program works with industry partners to increase system reliability, improve manufacturing processes, increase capacity factors, and reduce capital costs for both large and small land-based systems. To increase technology acceptance, the program works closely with national, regional, and state partners to develop policies favorable to wind energy development and to communicate the opportunities and benefits of wind energy to industry stakeholders, rural communities, Native Americans, educators, and the public.

Advancing wind energy technology and removing barriers to its commercialization and development will lead to increased deployment that will fortify our energy security and benefit our economy through more diverse, clean, reliable, and affordable domestic electricity supplies.

Kathleen O’Dell is Senior Communicator at the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. For more information visit http://www.nrel.gov.

EPA Partnerships

Addressing Climate Change

There is a preponderance of evidence that the global climate is changing due to the buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. These gases are a result of our everyday activities - the gasoline we burn in our cars, the coal that is burned for our electricity, even the farms that produce our food. Greenhouse gases persist in the atmosphere for decades, and their build up is directly related to rising global temperatures. Scientists around the globe are documenting the myriad ways in which this warming is manifesting itself in our natural systems. For example, glaciers are retreating on every continent, permafrost and sea ice are melting in the arctic, and droughts are becoming longer and more intense. Over time, the effects of climate change may have serious health, environmental, and economic consequences.

Addressing this global challenge will require decisive international action, and a collaborative effort involving cities, states, federal agencies, businesses, universities, non-profit organizations, and consumers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been addressing this issue for over a decade through a suite of partnership programs. More than 14,000 organizations nationwide have joined EPA to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through such things as energy efficiency, waste reduction strategies, and investments in clean energy. These organizations range from manufacturers and energy utilities, to municipalities and home builders. Their achievements have been noteworthy – through 2007, EPA’s partners have prevented 78 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the emissions from 52 million vehicles. They have also enjoyed co-benefits, as well, such as lower operating costs and an improved corporate image. In 2007 alone, the net savings to consumers and businesses was $17 billion dollars.

You might be familiar with some of EPA’s most popular programs, such as ENERGY STAR® and the Green Power Partnership. But others are also effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and fluorinated gases, which are very potent greenhouse gases. These programs are all voluntary and participation is free.

ENERGY STAR

Energy efficiency offers one of the lowest cost options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It also saves money and grows the economy. Since it started in 1992, the ENERGY STAR® program has worked to develop cost-effective, energy-efficient technologies and practices in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been a partner with EPA in this effort since 1996. The number of products that are offered through ENERGY STAR® grows every year, providing Americans with a credible, objective way to improve energy efficiency in their homes and businesses. Through the program, more than 12,000 businesses and organizations across the country are working with ENERGY STAR® to develop energy-efficient products, practices, homes, and buildings, and provide services that lower energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These partners include:

Approximately 2,000 manufacturers that are meeting ENERGY STAR® label requirements with over 40,000 individual product models across more than 50 product categories.

More than 1,000 retail partners are selling ENERGY STAR® qualified products to their customers, and sharing educational information.

More than 5,000 builders are constructing new homes that qualify for the ENERGY STAR® label in every state and the District of Columbia.

About 3,000 private businesses and public sector organizations are investing in energy efficiency and reducing energy use in their buildings and facilities.

More than 40 states and 550 utilities are leveraging ENERGY STAR® to improve the efficiency of commercial buildings, industrial facilities, and homes.

Hundreds of energy service providers, energy raters, architects, building engineers, and financial lenders are making energy efficiency more widely available through ENERGY STAR® and providing additional value to their customers.

Green Power Partnership

Purchasing electricity generated from green power sources through EPA’s Green Power Partnership offers organizations an easy and attractive way to reduce the environmental impact of their operations, hedge against volatile energy prices, increase employee and stakeholder morale, and demonstrate environmental leadership. The program has commitments from a variety of partners who range in size from Fortune 500 corporations to neighborhood businesses, large public universities to small private colleges, local communities to city, state, and federal government agencies.

Climate Leaders

EPA launched the Climate Leaders Program in 2002 to assist companies across the country in developing comprehensive climate change strategies. Climate Leaders has achieved a number of significant milestones, and the number of Climate Leaders partners continues to grow. They represent a broad range of industry sectors, including cement, forest products, pharmaceuticals, utilities, information technology, and retail. Partners operate in all 50 states and provide nearly seven million jobs worldwide. When joining the Climate Leaders partnership, companies make a commitment to reduce their impact on the global environment by completing a corporate-wide inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions, setting aggressive reduction goals, and annually reporting their progress to EPA. EPA provides guidance and recognition to partner companies as they develop and work toward their emissions reduction goals. Using EPA’s wide range of tools, expertise, and resources, partners can make informed decisions about cost-effective strategies, investments, and projects in the areas of energy efficiency, clean energy, and non-carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions. EPA continuously tracks partner progress through a variety of means and ensures the credibility of reported data by performing detailed reviews and making site visits.

Combined Heat and Power Partnership

The CHP Partnership seeks to reduce the environmental impact of power generation by promoting the use of combined heat and power as an efficient, clean, and reliable approach to generating power and thermal energy from a single fuel source. CHP projects are up to 25 percent more efficient than traditional separate heat and power generation. The partnership works closely with energy users, the CHP industry, state and local governments, and other stakeholders to support the development of new projects and promote benefits.

Natural Gas STAR

The Natural Gas STAR Program is a partnership between EPA and the U.S. natural gas industry. It was designed to promote the adoption of cost-effective technologies and practices that reduce methane emissions. Initiated in 1993, Natural Gas STAR partnered with companies from all sectors of the natural gas supply chain—production, processing, transmission, and distribution—to reduce gas losses, improve system efficiency, and ensure that more gas gets to market. The Program offers a range of tools and resources to help partners achieve results.

WasteWise

The WasteWise Program is in its 14th year of operation - continuing to foster partnerships with communities and businesses in an effort to reduce municipal waste. WasteWise has over 2,000 partners spanning 54 industry sectors, who have committed to reducing waste and increase recycling efforts. Its partners have experienced benefits such as operational efficiencies and reduced costs, while reducing their carbon footprints and conserving natural resources. This program provides support to partners through a helpline, and offers an-online tool to translate waste reduction efforts into tons of greenhouse gases reduced.

State and Local

EPA also collaborates with state and local governments to support them in their efforts to promote renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other clean energy technologies. In this role, EPA provides technical assistance, helps to measure and evaluate the benefits of their initiatives, and fosters peer exchange opportunities for officials to share information on best practices and innovative policies. Many of the partnership programs mentioned above provide the tools and resources needed to achieve their goals.

A common feature of all these programs is the recognition EPA gives to its partners for their achievements. They may share their success stories on EPA’s websites, post membership plaques in their facilities, and receive awards for their outstanding efforts. Recognition plays a large part in influencing cultural change, and making “green” practices a foundation for corporations and government agencies across the country.

EPA will continue to address climate change through its partnership programs. They are a cost-effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and there is still untapped potential for these programs to capture and deliver win-win opportunities.

Laura Farris is the Climate Change Coordinator for EPA’s regional office in Denver, CO. For more information, visit the EPA Region 8 website at www.epa.gov/region8/.

Today's Automobiles

A Greener Future with Alternative Fuels

With today’s engine designs, computerized fuel injection systems, and catalytic converters we have made huge reductions in vehicle emissions output. These systems are doing a very good job of converting carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon (unburned gasoline) and oxides of nitrogen to carbon dioxide (CO2). After all, we were always taught that the product of complete combustion is CO2. We exhale CO2 and plants use it for photosynthesis. How harmful can it be? Unfortunately, it is becoming consensus with the world’s science community that it is most likely contributing to global warming. With the strides we have made in harmful emissions reduction, we must now reduce the carbon output of today’s vehicles to address the challenge.

With the strides we have made in harmful emissions reduction, we must now reduce the carbon output of today’s vehicles to address the challenge. At Burt Automotive we offer eight different hybrid vehicles to fleet and retail customers from the Toyota Prius to the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid truck along with flex fuel vehicles to help confront this issue.

Regulation of traditional emissions has improved the air quality of our metro areas. For the most part these emissions did not affect rural areas to the same degree. Greenhouse gasses such as CO2 can affect not only the United States but also the whole planet by changing weather patterns. Winters are becoming shorter. Artic permafrost is melting and releasing methane gas from its once frozen soil. The greenhouse effect of methane is 23 times more potent than CO2. Many scientists believe that if the global temperature increased 3 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit then runaway climate change could occur and there will be nothing we can do about it.

A typical four-cylinder car engine can output around 350 grams per mile in CO2 emissions. A hybrid version of that same vehicle will output around 160 grams per mile. Now in contrast, a V8 engine can output more than 800 grams per mile of CO2. There is a direct relationship between the amount of fuel that goes in an engine and the amount of CO2 that comes out the exhaust. It requires less fuel consumption to reduce the CO2.

Global warming is on the minds of many. Although there are many causes, the cars and trucks Americans drive create about 20% of the greenhouse gas CO2 we emit into the atmosphere.

We still need to get to work, run our errands and deliver our goods. That means our automobiles need to be more efficient in the way they take an energy source and convert it to moving the vehicle. There has been a lot of media on hydrogen technology that uses no carbon. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of barriers to its use as a fuel, namely manufacturing it efficiently, the infrastructure to dispense it and the fuel cell that would utilize it. Right now, we have mainstream technologies that would allow us to use less fuel, which in turn would generate less CO2. We also have alternative types of fuel that are more carbon neutral.

Hybrid vehicle technologies have emerged as the dominate alternative to the average automobile. They utilize a combustion engine and electric motor(s). This combination allows the vehicle to use less fuel, which in turn reduces the carbon footprint. Various forms of hybrid technology have been around for many years but were used in train engines and submarines. Bringing this to the automobile required a lot of engineering. The hard components were relatively simple. It was the computer orchestration of combining the gasoline engine, electric motor/generator operation while monitoring the high voltage battery temperatures and state of charge that was complex. Regenerative braking was added to the picture as well. This allowed the lost kinetic energy to be captured and used to charge the high voltage battery. Not to mention, all of this must occur in a way that the driver of the vehicle is not affected by what is going on between the engine and electric motor. With the increase in efficiency, a hybrid vehicle can reduce fuel consumption up to 33%. This also equates to a direct decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by about the same percentage.

There are generally two forms of hybrid vehicles. There is the type that uses an electric motor to assist the gasoline engine. The electric motor is usually affixed to the back of the engine and will assist under acceleration. It usually gets its best fuel economy at highway speeds and requires the gasoline engine to run all the time. The second major type has an electric drive motor that moves the vehicle along with the gasoline engine. The vehicle will usually start off in electric mode utilizing the high torque of an electric motor to launch the vehicle. The gasoline engine turns on after the vehicle starts rolling and the car is propelled by the electric motor and gasoline engine at the same time. This type of hybrid vehicle will usually get its best fuel economy in the city. This is because the electric motor is used to move the vehicle mass from a stop. This is usually where most of the fuel economy is lost. Both technologies are more expensive to manufacture but save in fuel costs. Many taxi fleets are converting to hybrid vehicles namely the Ford Escape and Toyota Prius. They are reporting fuel savings that are helping the bottom line.

Reducing our CO2 output will need to be a priority for all of us if we are to make a difference and prevent major irreversible climate change. One major component of these hybrid systems is the battery pack. This component has room for the most improvement. Relatively efficient now, many manufacturers are working on improving its chemistry for greater robustness. Most hybrids currently use nickel metal hydride battery modules. This technology was developed during the days of the all-electric vehicle. At that time, all manufacturers were mandated by the State of California to have 2% of their fleet that was sold to be zero emission vehicles. The problem was they were extremely expensive to make and the battery pack could weigh 1,000 pounds or more. By miniaturizing this technology, they were able to downsize to less than 200 pounds They are efficient enough to allow a hybrid to get better fuel economy and have a very good life cycle. However, they cannot store as much energy as a lithium ion battery which was known for thermo overrun and short life span. As technology has advanced, this battery is becoming refined to the point where it can be installed in hybrid vehicles and used in conjunction with the electrical grid. Many manufactures are working on this technology known as Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV).

PHEV’s are in their infancy. General Motors is planning to produce the Chevrolet Volt by the end of 2010. Toyota has said they will come out with their PHEV Prius for fleet use in 2010 as well. There are several manufacturers producing aftermarket lithium ion battery packs for the Toyota Prius. One such manufacturer is A123 Systems which produces the Hymotion battery pack. This pack utilizes the advanced A123 battery cells that have low thermo overrun characteristics and good life expectancy. This added battery pack allows the Prius to achieve over 100 miles per gallon in city driving. It must be charged for 5 hours at a cost of about 50 to 70 cents depending on the electricity rate. Burt Automotive performs installations of the Hymotion battery pack into Toyota Prius vehicles and has had good success with it. With the Hymotion conversion, CO2 output is reduced by 60 percent of a stock Prius. These new technologies also have promise to further lessen our nation’s gasoline usage.

From hybrid, plug in hybrid, E85, and hydrogen, America’s fleet of the future will utilize multiple technologies to meet our transportation needs. Another way to reduce our carbon footprint is to use E85 - a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. However, you must have a flex-fuel vehicle that is designed to use E85. Flex fuel vehicles can use straight gasoline or E85. Currently there is controversy around using corn as the feedstock for ethanol production, including raising corn prices to inefficient production methods. New emerging technologies will allow for the use of corn stocks, switch grass and even wood chips to be converted to ethanol. These approaches show promise because non-food, but are in early stages of production. Ethanol has the potential to be more carbon neutral because as the plants used in ethanol grow, they consume carbon dioxide and as the ethanol is consumed by combustion, it produces carbon dioxide. It also produces less carbon monoxide during engine combustion because of the higher oxygen content over gasoline. One drawback to flex fuel vehicles using E85 as a fuel is a slight reduction in engine power and fuel economy because of ethanol’s lower BTU content. Engines that are designed from the ground up for the exclusive use of E85 would be much more efficient but not

Hybrid technology has been refined to the point where it is very reliable and allows for improvement in fuel economy and reduced carbon emissions. Emerging technologies will allow vehicles to plug into the electrical grid to charge batteries for increased fuel mileage and reduce carbon dioxide output. Ethanol has the potential to be produced in the United States and be utilized as a motor fuel reducing our reliance on foreign sources while reducing our carbon footprint. Not one technology will be the answer.

Scott Rill is the technical service manager for Burt Toyota. He manages technical repairs performed by twenty-three service and five lube technicians. He is certified by Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) and is a Toyota Master Diagnostic Technician. Scott is a two time Toyota Master Technician Skills Contest national finalist. Contact Mr. Rill at [email protected].

The Importance of Metals And Minerals

The Global Environment and the World’s Energy Needs

The earth’s crust is rich with minerals and transforming these ores into - metal tools, machines and equipment of all sorts, motor vehicles, solar cells, wind turbines, computers, the internet, communications satellites and the rockets that put them in orbit, medical equipment and innumerable other products - allow us to live a quality of life much different from that of our parents and grandparents. Stop and think about it. Even the most basic things we take for granted, from the roads and highways we drive on to flat screen television panels, are products of mining. Society not only relies on, but demands it receives the manufactured products it wants and has become accustomed.

Besides allowing us our standard of living and products, raw mineral products are the necessary ingredients of the world’s global economy. There is a saying that “raw materials are the basis of every modern industrial economy.” It is from raw, natural resources that nations treat, manufacture and produce value-added products. If a country does not have or cannot acquire raw minerals or initially beneficiated products like concentrates through international trade, it cannot produce and export manufactured goods or employ its citizens in good, long-term high-paying jobs. The choice for a country is to develop an industrialized economy or remain an agrarian one with all the age-old shortcomings of being at the bottom of the global economic ladder. It should be safe to assume that most of the world’s farmers would like their children and future generations to obtain an education or skills to enable them to move up that ladder.

Competition between developed and developing countries for the world’s finite production of metals will become more and more acute.

And recently there has been growing concern over man’s emissions of greenhouse gases and a renewed interest and acceptance of electricity produced from clean nuclear power. Not only is nuclear power clean and does not emit greenhouse gasses, but the U.S. and France have designed new and improved safe nuclear reactors. Much of the world, especially the Asian countries of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India have chosen to emphasize the development of nuclear power rather than rely on problematic fossil fuels.

So it is clear that we benefit immensely in a material way from the metals we remove from the ground. But there is more to this story than just the transformation of metals to products. Most people are not aware of origin or the obvious existence of the metals in their vehicles, metal beams in their bridges, overpasses, household appliances, wiring in their houses and work place. While in ancient times the ability to work with metals and manufactured things was extremely valued, people in modern times have become used to the benefits of refined, machined metals and manufactured products and take them for granted. To have these products people must be employed, and this is an important point. Mines are not usually in urban, developed areas. They are usually not close to large metropolitan areas. They are often “off the beaten track,” and in the U.S. are primarily in the Western states. But the people who work at mines, refine and produce the metals used in the manufacture of the products have one thing in common. They all enjoy high-paying sustainable jobs, jobs that allow them to obtain auto and home loans, purchase products and put money that multiplies its beneficial effect as it circulates through the economy. Indeed, the huge, U.S. economy was built on its domestic metal resources. From those metals, we built our railroads, ships, airplanes, engines of all sorts, and motor vehicles. And from those industries, we created millions of high-paying jobs and trained and hired workers to fill those jobs. And those workers bought things, built our strong economy and supported its continued growth. Currently, it is jobs, spending and jumpstarting the nation’s economy that President Obama is trying to create with his economic development program. As far as the world is concerned, economic growth resulted in the increased consumption of raw materials throughout the twentieth century. Between 1960 and 1995, world mineral use expanded by 2.5 times and metals use more than doubled (2.1 times). This growth outpaced the increase of the world’s population and occurred even though the world’s economy shifted to become more service oriented, and non-materials intensive manufacturing industries such as telecommunication and finance developed. Interestingly, metals use doubled even though metals became less important because of the increased use of plastics and other manufactured materials in the manufacturing industries.

To further illustrate how important the main industrialized countries are when it comes to metals use, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Western Europe represent 15% of the world’s population, but consumed 61% of the world’s aluminum, 60% of the lead, 59% of the copper and 49% of the steel. Use is high on a per capita basis as well. For example, the average American uses 22 kilograms (48.4 lbs.) of aluminum per annum, while the average Indian and African use 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs.) and 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs.), respectively. And the numbers are similar for China, but China is becoming a major consumer of metals to feed the development of its transportation sector, not only for roads and railroads, but for vehicles, ships and airplanes to be sold both domestically and on the world market. It is well known, and becoming more widely understood, that China is aggressively seeking to obtain long-term supplies of the metals, oil, gas and other natural resources that will be required for it to continue its march to become a fully developed country. On a broader scale, the countries known as the “BRIC” countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, are the countries that will be increasing their percentage consumption of the world’s metals over the coming decades. As their economies develop, they will significantly influence the future price of metals.

So where is this global increase in the consumption of metals taking us? No one has a long-term crystal ball, but in the shorter term it is obvious.

Metals prices will increase and manufactured products containing them will become more expensive. Not only will metals resources be sought out in more and more remote locations, i.e., the Arctic, Antarctica, seabed mining, central Asia and of course continued expansion into the far recesses of South America and Africa, but ways will need to be developed to ensure these metals operations will be reliable from an environmental perspective.

Besides allowing these countries to grow their economies and better the livelihood of their people, a fallout of this sprint to acquire and develop metals resources has the potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental consequences.

Mining metals requires the use of heavy equipment, equipment that not only run on diesel, but they cannot be manufactured without using a lot of energy. And what about environmental consequences that could result from mining metals in far off places? On one hand, developing nations recognize the importance of conducting mining operations and promoting economic development in a clean, environmentally responsible manner. However, it is not always easy for developing countries to closely monitor mining and other development activities, or to enforce its environmental laws and regulations. But since most major mining operations involve at least one international mining company who knows how to conduct operations that are sound from an environmental perspective, the operation may well have obtained financing that requires compliance with the Equator Principals.

So the U.S. and all developing countries in the world must face the challenges resulting from the fact that populations and economies continue to grow, which will result in the increased consumption of metals, including Uranium for nuclear power reactors.

The challenge for a country and the world as a whole is to obtain enough metals necessary to sustain its economic growth, all the while mining the needed metals in a safe, sustainable and environmentally conscientious manner.

This is of course a lot easier said than done, but the mining industry and the world’s large financial institutions who will provide much of the funds necessary for this growth, are committed to this goal.

But because the world’s metals resources are in a sense finite, recycling will continue to become more efficient and more significant in the metals sector. In this regard, recycling is a truly substantial and vital sector of the steel industry. Having a stable metals mining industry is a fundamental requirement if the world is to regain and then maintain a strong economy. And no economy can be strong without a good source of energy to power its industries making nuclear power part of a vigorous global economic development effort. The world must be realistic and reasonable if it is to achieve this goal. People will come to realize they cannot escape their need to consume metals. So their ultimate challenge is to figure out a balance between the obvious needs of any vibrant economy for metals and energy and the goal of living in a healthy pollution-free environment.

Mark T. Nesbitt is at Nesbitt & Associates LLC, Attorneys and Counselors at Law. You can contact Mr. Nesbitt at 1580 Lincoln Street, Suite 700, Denver, Colorado 80203-1557. Phone: (303) 302-3097 Fax: (303) 302-3088 Email: [email protected].

Powering a Nation

Energy Development on Native Lands

Think “energy development on Indian lands” and probably wind, solar, geothermal and biomass projects - renewables - are what come to mind, but that’s not all that’s happening in on Native American reservations. Coal, which supplies more than 50 percent of America’s electricity, is still very much in the mix, and for good reason.

Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse-Campbell, R-Colo., told Congress just five years ago, “Indian lands comprise approximately 5 percent of the land area of the United States, but contains an estimated 10 percent of all energy reserves in the United States, including 30 percent of known coal deposits located in the western portion of the United States.”

Coal deposits are a big part of many tribes’ patrimony. Coal can be the resource that provides a decent standard of living, sends kids to college, and finances the struggle to affirm and maintain tribal sovereignty.

Steven J. Morello (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) is director of the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs. “Energy development will be worth three times what gaming is worth in Indian Country,” he said. “Tribes need to take stock of their energy resources.”

Morello listed some of the energy projects on Indian reservations: the Northwest Band of Shoshone Nation is building the first of five geothermal plants and its entire output is already sold; the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin have built an exemplary biomass facility; and the Oklahoma Cherokee, the Navajo Nation and many other tribes are working on wind projects.

Then there are the major coal projects: Many Stars CTL (coal-to-liquid) facility on the Crow Reservation in Montana and Desert Rock Energy Project, a coal-fired power plant in New Mexico on the Navajo Nation.

“The CTL plant will produce synthetic jet fuel for the Air Force,” said Morello.

When fully operational, the plant will provide millions in revenues each year to the Crow Nation. This will give them the opportunity to truly determine their own destiny.”

On Desert Rock, Morello said, “The Navajo Nation doesn’t yet do gaming and has great economic need. We advise tribes, ‘Don’t sell your raw materials, sell a product.’ That’s what the Navajo Nation is doing. The plant will generate electricity and provide jobs.

Many Stars CTL Project

Crow Tribal Chairman Carl Venne said the Many Stars Coal to Liquid project would not only “secure the future of the tribe and its members for generations, but would also enhance national security by making the United States less dependent on foreign oil.”

“On the Crow Reservation we have a 47-percent unemployment rate and a yearly average family income of $7,000 to $10,000. Our people are the poorest of the poor; we don’t make money from gaming,” Venne said. “We together as Indian tribes have an American dream to own our own homes, have jobs, and send our kids to school. But the federal government can’t do this.”

“We’ve given up a lot to this nation, which has not taken care of our tribe. Our land base was 38 million acres; now it is 2.5 million acres. What it boils down to is this: The government has managed our resources for 140 years and we lost everything. We’re tired of waiting for the federal government. We want the opportunity to make our own decisions and mistakes.”

How important is this project for the tribe? “We have the resources to secure the reservation for generations to come. That’s how important it is,” Venne answered.

Ken Roberts, COO of Australian-American Energy Company, a subsidiary of Australian Energy Company, the developer of Many Stars, explained that the project would use coal gasification combined with Fischer-Tropsch process, generally referred to as coal-to-liquids: Coal is first partially oxidized to create a synthesis gas made of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and then it is converted catalytically (a chemical process under heat and pressure…the Fischer-Tropsch process) into a synthetic crude. That can then be refined into transportation fuels and other chemicals. “Basically, the process takes the coal molecules apart and puts them back together in another form to create ultraclean transportation fuels. In this case, the plant will produce both synthetic diesel and jet fuel.

Roberts said the Fischer-Tropsch process has been around since before World War II. In the past several years the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense have carried out studies to verify the benefits of synthetic fuels made using the Fischer-Tropsch process. Results have been good, and the Air Force is moving toward certifying its entire fleet of jets to use this fuel.

“The technology will help us achieve energy independence and security,” Roberts said. “This is fuel produced from domestic supplies of resources, not foreign oil. The project is of huge strategic importance to the U.S. and helps set the pathway for other CTL projects in this country.”

The Crow project will need two to three years for design work, including final site selection of the plant and the coal mine that will supply it, with these initial development costs in the $100-million range.

About $7 billion will be needed in capital costs for construction of the plant, which will take about four years. “CTL facilities are highly capital-intensive projects,” said Roberts. Investors from the U.S., Australia, and other countries will get a reasonable rate of return on the project because oil prices are so high. “Oil prices of $75 a barrel or higher make CTL economically viable,” said Roberts.

The Crow Tribe will receive royalties and taxes from the coal mining operation as well as share in the profits from the CTL plant, with the exact dollar amount being related to future crude oil prices. In addition, “Part of our agreement is to help develop education and training programs to meet the needs of the project and operations into the future,” said Roberts. The project is expected to create up to 4,000 temporary construction jobs and up to 900 permanent jobs on a reservation of 12,000 people.

Coal gasification in a CTL plant takes place in an enclosed system, which makes it possible to capture significant amounts of the carbon dioxide produced by the process. The carbon dioxide can then be injected into deep geologic structures (geosequestration) or sold to oil production companies for enhanced oil recovery in older reservoirs.

Roberts explained that underground gas storage is not experimental. “Naturally-occurring carbon dioxide reservoirs exist and are currently being used for enhanced oil recovery, such as Jackson Dome in Mississippi and Sheep Mountain in Colorado. Natural gas has been injected and stored in underground reservoirs by the petroleum industry for a long time.” He said the company is working with the Department of Interior to locate potential storage locations for the carbon dioxide generated by the Many Stars Project. There are also many oil fields in the area that could utilize the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.

This project, Roberts said, would use stranded coal, coal that does occur in sufficient quality or quantity to be economic to develop if costs for transporting the coal to power plants have to be added in. “The CTL plant can be built near the mine to reduce costs of transporting the coal,” said Roberts.

“That’s the same amount that would be needed to irrigate a 7,500-acre field of alfalfa,” said Roberts. “Fifteen acre feet a year represents less than 3 percent of the tribe’s water rights on the reservation today. We intend to be very attentive to water and carbon dioxide concerns. Our objective is to be technically reliable, environmentally responsible and safe.”

Desert Rock Energy Project

Steven Begay is general manager of Diné Power Authority, the Navajo Nation’s coal energy development arm and co-developer with the international development company Sithe Global Power subsidiary Desert Rock Energy Company of the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project.

Begay is acutely aware of the place coal could have in economic development on tribal lands: “There is a huge supply of coal here. From Four Corners to Grants, N.M., there is enough coal under lease to last us for 30-50 years. After that, there are harder-to-retrieve supplies good for another for 300-500 years.”

The Desert Rock project, an advanced-technology coal plant, is composed of two 750-MW units that use supercritical boiler technology, Begay explained. The units burn pulverized coal and the power plant will be built so that it can be retrofitted for carbon-dioxide capture and sequestration when that technology is mature.

For now it will have the latest emission controls, among them selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology (the same system used to control vehicle emissions) designed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and other pollutants, a bag house to contain particulates, and wet scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions.

Frank Maisano, a spokesman for Desert Rock Energy Company, said: “This plant will be built to meet the most stringent air-pollution limits ever imposed in the United States. Other projects have used pieces of the technology, but never before has it all been combined in one project. Desert Rock will set a new standard.”

Like the Crow Tribe’s project, coal for Desert Rock will come from tribal lands, specifically from the BHP Billiton mine near Farmington, N.M., which is expanding to meet the needs of this and other projects.

Maisano said the plant would use about 4,000 acre-feet a year of water, 85 percent less than older coal-fired plants. That number includes 500 acre-feet that will be given to nearby Indian communities. “It’s non-potable water that comes from a very deep aquifer. The communities would not be able to get the water themselves. They’ll be able to use it agriculture and other purposes.” Most of the remaining 3,500 acre-feet will be used for the pollution control equipment. “The plant is air-cooled,” said Maisano, “Cooling Desert Rock does not require water.”

Transmitting power from tribal energy projects to the market is an on-going challenge because many of the transmission lines running near the reservations do not have unused capacity. The Navajo Nation is working on getting clearances to build a new 500 kV AC transmission line that would run from Four Corners to Southern Nevada.

Begay talked about the economics of coal projects on Indian lands.

“When the opposition says don’t do coal, just do wind, solar, nuclear, we still have growing demand for electricity and coal’s a big piece of meeting that demand. We need a mixture of generation.”

“We need a proper mix instead of just saying ‘Green is good.’ Coal can be the backup baseload supply to support wind and solar development. Maybe when coal runs out in 1000 years or so, we’ll need to do something else.”

The No-Coal Option

Geri Small, President of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and tribal attorney, Steve Chestnut of Ziontz, Chestnut, Varnell, Berley & Slonim in Seattle, talked to Native American Journal about the tribe’s experience with coal development in the mid 1960s through the early 1980s, a period during which many tribes – virtually at the insistence of the Department of Interior – were entering into leases for coal extraction on their lands.

“Between 1966 and 1971, coal companies including Peabody Western Coal, Consolidation Coal Company, and Chevron, as well as speculators, had acquired leases for coal on the tribe’s land, Chestnut said. “In 1972 and 1973 the tribal council began to realize they had essentially lost control of the reservation.”

“There was massive national interest in resources caused by the energy crisis of the early 1970s. Western coal was seen as the savior. Deals were put together by the BIA. Our royalty rate was 17.5 cents per ton, going down to 16 cents per ton if the coal was processed on the reservation.”

Said Chestnut, “It was a great giveaway and the council couldn’t live with it.”

In 1973 the tribe started to look at how they could get Interior to cancel the leases. It was a high-profile effort, said Chestnut. “The companies involved were very powerful and the tribe had little by way of financial resources.”

The tribe submitted a 600-page petition to the Secretary of Interior asking him to review and cancel the leases. At the end of 1973, Secretary Rogers Morton suspended all of the lease transactions, saying he wouldn’t go along unless the tribe agreed. “I think he wanted to give the tribe leverage to negotiate a better deal, and every company made it plain that there was room to renegotiate. But the tribe was not interested,” said Chestnut.

“This went on for several years. The tribe would never go along, but the leases were only suspended, so a legislative solution was needed,” Chestnut said. “Ultimately it took an act of Congress. The deal was that the companies would relinquish their rights to Northern Cheyenne coal and in return receive rights to federal coal located in other places the companies were already mining.”

In 1980-1981, the tribe received sizable damage payments. “The tribe had achieved its objective—they got clear title to the reservation and some damages and picked up 7,000 acres of land.” The one group of speculators that held out lost out when the final date for negotiations set by Congress expired. Their leases were automatically canceled.

“The whole strategy was conceived and executed by the tribe. Northern Cheyenne has very good tribal leaders, for example, Edwin Dahle, who is considered a tribal hero,” said Chestnut.

And since? “There’s nothing going on” in regard to the development of coal or coalbed methane on the reservation, said Small.

Chestnut offered this explanation: “The tribe is unbelievably dedicated to the reservation.”

Reprinted with permission by Native American Journal, October 2008.

It's Time To Dye The White Collar Green

An Interview with Van Jones

Van Jones is an award-winning activist, bestselling author, speaker, and political advisor. I first became a die-hard fan in 2007 when I attended my first (and far from my last) Awakening the Dreamer Symposium - a program of the Pachamama Alliance and presented by its founder, Lynne Twist. I sat in awe, quite literally glued to the screen, listening to the profound wisdom Mr. Jones shared about many ideas, but especially about how he views collaboration to be a significant solution to our planets problems. He said,

“For too long we’ve had this division between ecology and social justice, and so you’re either concerned about nature and the environment, or you’re concerned about people. Now you’re starting to see a much more wisdom-based approach to the fact that there are no single issues. If you pull enough on any single issue, you find it’s connected to every other issue. When you talk about cosmology, and I talk about racial justice, we realize we’re speaking the same language, When you talk about environment, and I talk about community health we’re speaking the same language. And so now it’s the age for the translator. It’s the age for the bridge builder. It’s the age for Velcro. It’s the age for Lego. It’s the age for combining what we already have into what we need.”

It is no surprise that The Green Collar Economy, How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, was written by Mr. Jones, and it could not be more current. The book launched at #12 on the New York Times bestseller list with a timely message - that green jobs can save both our economy and our environment. Through Jones’ steady stewardship, his organization Green For All helped create the Green Jobs Act (2007). Once passed, the act authorized $125 million in “green-collar” job training. This training is folded into emerging green sectors such as solar and wind industries, energy retrofitting and green building construction. The monies approved by Congress don’t find their way only to existing businesses with a need to improve their bottom line. Twenty percent of the funds also support “Pathways Out of Poverty,” a program providing targeted resources and support to low-income individuals.

I had the great pleasure to meet Mr. Jones at the Big Tent, blogger headquarters during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He spoke on several riveting subjects from environmental justice to green jobs not jails. I found myself analyzing the content of his presentations, using his topics as a springboard to further inquiry. After reading the book I was able to formulate the following questions…

In your book The Green Collar Economy you clearly describe how, “some of the barriers to a real breakthrough are not technological, economic or political.” Describe your vision of what the barriers are and what we need to do to fix them?

Well, there are political challenges to moving to renewable energy and energy efficiency. There are economic and technological challenges, too. But one of the biggest things standing in our way is the lack of workers trained and ready to do the work of building the green economy.

Bringing America’s economy into the 21st century is going to take a lot of work. We have to retrofit and upgrade millions of buildings. We have to install millions of solar panels, and plant and care for millions of trees. We have to build millions of plug-in hybrid vehicles. We need thousands of solar farms, wind farms, and wave farms; we’ll have to build those, too. And we have to manufacture the solar panels, wind turbines and wave power turbines for those energy farms.

Who’s going to do all this work? Right now, America does not have a workforce trained to do the hard and noble work of building the green economy. But we have more than enough people who want those jobs, who want to be trained and equipped to do work that not only feeds their families but saves the country and the planet.

So the biggest barrier is not having enough workers to do the work. How do we overcome this barrier? We invest in workers. We invest in the everyday person, ready to work and looking to serve. We invest in training programs, service and learning programs, job placement programs.

Right now, Green For All is preparing to roll out our campaign for a Clean Energy Corps for America. It’s our plan to do all these things so that we can match the people who most need work, with the work that most needs to be done.

At ICOSA we believe that collaboration could save the world. Describe how collaboration creates a Green Collar Economy, and could in fact be the answer to our economic problems?

From floods to fires, from foreclosures to financial collapse, it should be obvious to everyone at this point that the old, pollution-based economy is hurting the planet and hurting the people. We need a new, green economy - one that helps the planet and helps the people.

That’s a big shift. To get there, we need a massive and deliberate reorganization of the country’s resources and priorities. The work ahead of us - from retrofitting buildings, to constructing energy farms, to upgrading our power grid, and so on - is going to create tremendous opportunities for work, wealth and health. But it will also create a million and one headaches, missteps and failures if we aren’t moving forward together as a country, united.

That means collaboration. That means building a strong, durable, and broad-based coalition with the political muscle to move such a comprehensive agenda. It will not be easy. The current economy, based on pollution and exclusion, still has many powerful supporters entrenched in Washington and on Wall Street.

No, it will not be easy. But it is necessary, and possible.

We all have something to gain from a green economy. But none of us can build it alone. Which means we have to build it together. All of us — workers, environmentalists, activists, students, people of color, people of faith, small farmers, progressive business and finance leaders, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, scientists, and more.

I call it a “Green Growth Alliance,” and it boils down to exactly what you said: collaboration can save the world.

You describe ethanol, nuclear power and “clean coal” as false solutions. You even suggest, “in a world full of hungry people burning food should be criminally punished.” Why do you think the U.S. continues to be attached to these solutions?

I call it a “Green Growth Alliance,” and it boils down to exactly what you said: collaboration can save the world. Well, the American people aren’t attached to these false solutions. But there are those who have made enormous profits exploiting the planet that want to keep doing that.

When I travel the country and talk to regular people, they all want a country where their children don’t get asthma, where their workplaces don’t put them at risk for cancer, where climate change isn’t jeopardizing the farms that feed them, where energy sources are renewable and local and don’t lead to wars and other political conflict. Everyone wants that.

The challenge is giving people a way to understand and participate in the solutions. When we do that well, everything becomes a lot easier.

What are some examples of green technology that can spur greater economic growth (akin to the Silicon Valley explosion in the 90’s)?

The low-hanging fruit in the green economy is energy efficiency. By investing in energy efficiency, we can create hundreds of thousands of green-collar jobs and dramatically reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming. Most people don’t know this, but buildings are responsible for more of our energy use and greenhouse gas emissions — about 40 percent — than anything else.

That includes transportation and industry. At the same time, our buildings are incredibly wasteful. They leak energy constantly because of loose windows and doors, poor insulation, and other easy-to-fix problems. And older appliances use more energy than necessary to do simple things like heat water or refrigerate our food.

Those problems may be easy to fix, but they won’t fix themselves. We need people to do the work, and that means jobs. Retrofitting and upgrading our nation’s buildings would be a major job engine and a catalyst for the green economy.

Since your second son, Mattai, and I share a birthday, how has fatherhood changed your views and your work?

I am much more committed to real impact and creating a real difference. When I was younger, I was happy just giving speeches and going to coalition meetings and protests. Whether we won - or whether our victories truly changed anything - was of lesser importance than whether we were “right.” But now I have two boys, and they will be asking me about what we did, or didn’t do, to heal their planet. And I don’t want to have silly answers for them, when they are bigger. And I don’t want them to grow old on a hot, strip-mined, dying planet.

What kind of impact has the recession had on the green collar economy, and what are your projections for the green job market based on those trends?

When I was younger, I worked harder and harder - but saw few results. Now I want to work smarter. This recession has been hard on everybody. Green-collar workers are no exception; neither are green entrepreneurs. But there is a silver lining.

The severity of this recession has made it obvious that the old way of doing things does not work.

It has left even the most skeptical more open to the ideas and arguments of the green-collar movement.

You can see it in the stimulus package, which contains significant investment in green industry and green-collar workers. The federal government is not just trying to stimulate the economy, it is also paying special attention to nurturing the seeds of the new, green economy.

Basically, the recession has taught us a lesson we should have learned long ago, and it has taught us the hard way. That lesson will, I hope, be the springboard to a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Rebecca Saltman is a social entrepreneur and the President and Founder of a Foot in the Door Productions an independent collaboration building firm designed to bridge business, government, non-profits and education. Contact Rebecca at [email protected].

Harrison Western

Protecting Watersheds and Reclaiming Polluted Water

Worldwide demand for water is doubling every 21 years and the World Bank reports that 80 countries already have water shortages that threaten health and economies. Agriculture and other industries are all competing with a growing global population for limited fresh water resources.

Mining companies and oil and gas producers, in particular, are feeling the forces of tighter water supplies and tighter discharge regulations that are part of the growing watershed-management trend around the world. As a result of the growing pressures, significant progress has been made in technologies and best practices for conserving, purifying, recycling, and desalinating water in an effort to increase freshwater availability and quality.

HW Process Technologies (HWPT), for example, has been solving water pollution problems around the world for decades. The quiet giant from Colorado got into the water treatment business by helping many of the worlds largest mining companies to successfully treat mass quantities of mine water. Because of HWPT, these mining companies are able to reclaim millions of gallons of clean water, while reclaiming valuable metals and chemicals from wastewater.

HWPT also developed successful water treatment solutions for oil and gas production for both produced water and “frac” water. The custom-designed systems can improve various industrial processes that rely on fluid and chemical management.

HWPT was founded in 1988, determined to solve the environmental concerns associated with water management in the mining industry. Because mine water discharges are high-impact problems, HWPT sees responsible water management as part of their clients’ “social-license-to-operate.” The water treatment systems offered by HWPT have proven superior in performance and economy relative to traditional chemical precipitation systems.

HWPT’s powerful systems process more than 10,000 gallons of industrial-grade wastewater per minute at one installation. In the water-intensive mining industry, for example, high-volume and high-performance are critical because the potential impacts of mining on the water environment include:

Seepage of contaminated water from mine tailings and closed mine operations

De-watering of active mining operations

Recovery of valuable metals and solvents otherwise lost through wastewater discharge

HWPT has already installed numerous custom water treatment systems for mining companies, oil and gas developers, and government agencies around the world. Although the company is based in Colorado, all of its installations so far have been outside of the United States. Even though HWPTs clients are reclaiming millions of gallons of clean water every day, the systems also reclaim many thousands of dollars worth of valuable minerals and chemicals from the water treatment process. This protects the watershed and also protects the bottom line by allowing efficient and environmentally responsible operation.

As operational and environmental pressures on mining, oil, gas, and other industries continue to rise, HWPT’s proprietary EMS® water treatment systems are more important than ever. For example, one client was forced to shut down mining operations completely for several months due to water-discharge problems. HWPT’s engineers immediately installed one of its high-performance systems to replace a competitor’s failed reverse osmosis membrane system and the mine was producing again. Elsewhere in the world, a large mining company credits HWPT for tripling gold production by increasing the mine’s water treatment capability. That system is generating millions of dollars of returns by producing usable water, and capturing valuable metals and chemicals.

Although the company is continuously improving its systems and expanding their applications, one of HWPT’s first, large mining installations showed an immediate payback. When commissioned, the challenges that HWPT confronted at this open pit copper mine in Mexico included:

Dewatering the pit and reducing the volume of acid leach solution;

Increasing copper concentration in the leach solution for enhanced recovery;

Reducing acid costs by recovering acid and avoiding the cost of neutralization with lime; and

Recovering large volumes of clean water for mine use.

The breakthrough system recovered 2.5 million gallons of clean water and 28,000 pounds of copper each day. The system increased copper production 14 percent by recovering copper otherwise lost in the mine wastewater. With current copper prices and water prices factored in, the company realized a 200 percent return on its total investment each day. Capital investment in the EMS® system was recovered in 1.7 years. Some of HWPT’s clients have recovered their investment in just four months.

Specific water quality problems in mining that are addressed by HWPT systems include salinity and acidification. The mining process exposes heavy metals and sulfur compounds that were previously locked away in the earth. Rainwater leaches these compounds out of the exposed earth, resulting in acid mine drainage (AMD) and heavy metal pollution that can continue long after the mining operations have ceased. Similarly, rainwater on piles of mining waste (tailings) can transfer pollution to freshwater supplies. Plus, huge pools of mining waste are often stored in containment ponds. If a dam leaks or bursts, entire watersheds can be contaminated.

Industry, labor, government, and environmentalists agree AMD is the number one environmental problem facing the mining industry.

It is a common problem in all countries where mining started prior to environmental legislation. Many mines are reaching the end of their productive life and as a result, dewatering is terminated and re-watering results in the decant (overflow) of AMD. In addition, tailings dams and waste rock dumps are surface sources of AMD.

AMD devastates fish and aquatic habitat, is difficult to reverse with existing technology, and once started, costs millions of dollars annually to treat

(continuing for centuries). The Iron Mountain mine in California, for example, has been closed since 1963 but continues to drain sulfuric acid and heavy metals into the Sacramento River. The mine’s effluent streams are void of life and have a pH range of 0.2 to 1.5. The Equity Silver mine north of Vancouver, British Columbia will require treatment for AMD for at least 500 years.

Many benefits result from AMD neutralization and precipitation. For mining operations in positive water-balance environments, where site discharges are required, the treatment system can reduce mercury, arsenic, thallium, selenium, antimony and molybdenum in water to the double-digit parts-per-billion level or less.

HWPT’s patented technology utilizes composite thin-film membranes with pore sizes different than the reverse osmosis membranes commonly used for seawater desalination. The pore size, membrane material, and operating conditions are all specifically engineered by HWPT to allow operation at lower pressures, maximizing the recovery of contaminants.

The feed stream is separated into a permeate solution and a concentrated solution. The permeate passes through the membrane, while the concentrate is held back with the thicker dissolved solids, organics and bacteria. A series of membranes can continue screening the permeate solution to remove various elements in a sequence that captures the smallest particles and chemicals last before releasing clean water.

EMS® systems can be designed to selectively screen ions such as aluminum, calcium, chloride, copper, gold, iron, magnesium, nickel, selenium, uranium, zinc, not to mention chemicals used in oil and gas exploration and production. The robust systems can be designed to reject sulfate, silica, organics, colloids and other contaminants as well.

For coal bed methane, the EMS® system can be used for the production of surface discharge-quality water under the most stringent environmental guidelines. In the oil and gas fields, the contaminated waters produced can be treated to recover potable water. As these wells age and become depleted, they typically produce more water.

HWPT is driven to succeed where other water treatment companies fail. After proving its technology in the toughest mining waters, the company is confident that its custom systems can clean up any water anywhere in the world.

HWPT already has a strong international presence, but countries such as China, India, and those throughout Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa present a number of opportunities to help numerous stakeholders. For example, HWPT systems can clean toxic waters from mines that are currently operating, and mines that are considered exhausted, but still discharging toxic waters. With proper treatment, these polluted mine waters can be cleaned up and safely used again.

Plus, industrial process waters around the world – previously considered too polluted to clean – can be treated and used for other purposes, while the reclaimed chemicals can be reused in the industrial process. Many countries also have highly polluted lakes due to policies that once allowed pollution in discharged waters. Now these countries must remove these pollutants to reclaim local water supplies and entire ecosystems.

International partners and suppliers will play a critical role as HWPT expands its network around the world. Emerging global alliances will help the company manufacture equipment and materials to exacting specifications at a lower cost. In fact, HWPT is exploring opportunities with two Chinese research institutes to keep its products on the cutting edge of treatment technology in industrial applications. HWPT has had a strong research relationship with the world-renowned Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado for many years. These global alliances and others will help HWPT reclaim many millions of additional gallons of water around the world.

For more information about HW Process Technologies, visit www.harwest.com or call 1-800-638-8793.

Cameco Corporation

Providing an Alternative to Carbon-Based Energy in Trying Times

With all of the economic challenges the world is facing, one of the most important revolves around the production of energy. It not only helps drive our economy but also provides the lights for our schools where our future leaders are being educated.

Even with the downturn in our economy, electricity demand is expected to double by 2030. It is predicted that the increase will be the greatest in developing economies.

These demands leave all of us with a serious challenge. Energy must be found and delivered but it has to be safe, reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable. The environmental challenge is particularly vexing.

Our continued reliance on fossil fuels comes with myriad of costs, many of them measurable. Those costs include the exhaustion of natural resources and the reliance on countries for resources that have governments with political positions that are anathema to the West. There are also the challenges that fossil fuels bring, related to air pollution and the warming of the Earth. These problems are particularly acute in China and Russia.

No single energy source offers the perfect solution to these economic and environmental costs, many of which are rising. Renewable options such as wind, water and solar are increasing in their popularity, in part because they are “cleaner” alternatives. However, their intermittent nature cannot today provide the necessary energy to meet all industrial and residential demands.

One re-emerging and viable solution to this problem is nuclear power, which has lost favor in the United States over the last two decades. President Obama discussed the need for nuclear power while campaigning for the presidency.

The issue of plant safety, including the fear of radioactivity, especially as a terrorist threat, is on many people’s minds. However, most of the alternatives used to generate electricity carry similar but different risks.

There can be little question that nuclear power delivers large amounts of electricity without generating greenhouse gas emissions or toxic air pollutants. That is one of the reasons it is being used as an alternative for generating power, domestically and abroad.

The status of nuclear power as a reliable, cost-effective and environmentally appropriate technology for electricity production is growing and these benefits are becoming even more compelling as the Earth continues to warm.

In part because of safety concerns, the nuclear industry is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world. It has strict licensing requirements for construction, operation and decommissioning of all operations. The industry also holds itself accountable through international organizations such as the World Association of Nuclear Operators and the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations.

Since 2001, the Nuclear Energy Institute reports that U.S. nuclear power plants have achieved the lowest production costs amongst coal, natural gas and petroleum.

Taking the lead in the production of nuclear power is Cameco Corporation, headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The company, whose president and chief operating officer is Gerald Grandey, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2008.

Cameco is “committed to improving our performance and demonstrating environmental leadership — an objective that causes us to look at our impact on the environment and strive for continued improvement,” said Grandey, who joined the company as a senior vice president for marketing and development in the early 1990s. “We do this, even though we have complied with regulatory standards for many years.” He became President and CEO in 2003.

On a global scale, it is estimated that in comparison with coal-fired generation, nuclear reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 2.5 billion tons per year.

Cameco is one of the world’s largest uranium producers accounting for nearly 20 percent of world production from its mines in Canada and the U.S., and operations in Kazakhstan. Its philosophy is that “no job is so important that we cannot take the time to do it safely.”

Grandey, a California native who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in geophysical engineering stressed, “in advancing our nuclear energy business, we help create opportunities and wealth that allow future generations to advance and prosper as our generation has.” A former lawyer who practiced in Denver after graduating from Northwestern University Law School, he added, “as we pursue our current activities, we preserve choices so that those future generations are able to address the challenges and opportunities that they will face in a sustainable way.”

One opportunity that Grandey helped negotiate was an agreement with Russia to market highly enriched uranium (HEU) from dismantled Soviet-era weapons. The equivalent of 13,000 warheads have been recycled into fuel for electricity generation under a “megatons to megawatts” program.

Cameco has controlling ownership of the world’s largest high-grade reserves and low-cost operations in northern Saskatchewan with ore grades up to 100 times the world average. Cameco has uranium refining, conversion and fuel manufacturing operations, as well as a partnership in Bruce Power, North America’s largest nuclear generating station located 150 miles northwest of Toronto.

As we conduct ourselves in accordance with these principles and our values, we will maintain our social license to operate and will deliver, in a sustainable manner, the significant benefits of nuclear energy to people around the world.”

The company stresses that sustainability drives its decisions as it expands its involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. It is developing uranium mines in Canada and Central Asia, and pursuing exploration opportunities throughout the world.

According to Cameco, sustainable development is simply “meeting the needs of our stakeholders today, while preserving choices for future generations to meet their needs.” The company lists four key measurers of success concerning its governance and management practices.

Cameco believes that sustainable development requires economic, environmental and social responsibility, as well as a strong commitment to governance and management. The company organizes its sustainable development indicators around its governance practices as well as its measures of success. “We will only pursue those investment opportunities that can meet all four of our measures of success,” stated Grandey, “a safe healthy and rewarding workplace, a clean environment, supportive communities and outstanding financial performance.” Cameco sees such development as an integral component to the way it does business.

The company’s sustainable development report, plays an important role in helping the company communicate with its key stakeholders, monitor and measure its performance, and ensure accountability in all areas of its business. The 2008 Report documented how well the company did in regards to its governance and management practices and four key measures of success.

In an effort to address the information needs of Cameco’s key stakeholder groups, the company hired Canadian Business for Social Responsibility to gather and collate feedback from company stakeholders through interviews and focus groups. Cameco plans to use the results and recommendations to improve reporting in the future.

“We look to sustainable development as a means of aligning, communicating and measuring our priorities,” said Victor Zaleschuk, Cameco chair. “But the test of sustainability does not stop there. Cameco sees sustainable development as a means for holding ourselves accountable for the long-term consequences of our operations.”

The company chose 23 key performance indicators to build on for sustainable development reporting. The company’s leadership, including Zaleschuk who joined Cameco’s board of directors in 2001, feels that these are the appropriate parameters at this stage in its sustainable development program.

Cameco increased the amount spent on corporate donations and sponsorships from $1.98 million in 2005 to more than $5.5 million in 2008. “We want to increase employment and business opportunities, but also support programs that enhance health and social infrastructure,” said Grandey. Cameco is supporting “the Northumberland Hospital in Ontario, St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation in Saskatoon, the Ile-a-la-Crosse Health Centre and High School in northern Saskatchewan and Cameco’s annual employee giving campaign.”

The continued increase in net earnings has made it possible to increase the corporate investment budget annually with major investments in education and literacy, health and wellness, youth and community development. Each year Cameco targets one percent of forecasted net earnings to go toward community investment initiatives.

Cameco strives to provide significant employment and economic benefits that come from its activities for communities near its operating sites. The company’s community investment program encompasses relationships with dozens of communities in Canada, Australia, the U.S. and Central Asia.

It is the company’s fundamental belief that supportive communities are a key measure of its long-term success. Cameco and its employees support hundreds of community projects. The company believes that taken together, these acts of community investment - large and small - make a difference.

Cameco focuses on education and literacy as a priority of community investment. This is demonstrated across a spectrum of learning, supporting projects from preschool to high school and throughout the community.

The company assisting post-secondary education with a $3 million contribution to the University of Saskatchewan (U of S), the largest single donation that the company ever has made. In 1995, the company invested $1.5 million to establish a Cameco chair in aqueous and environmental geochemistry at the U of S.

Cameco research chair Jim Hendry is studying the long-term behavior of elements such as arsenic and radium within mine tailings facilities. While the company benefits from the research, Hendry’s findings are important to other mining companies as well. Canada’s only synchrotron machine is located at the U of S and Hendry has been able to use the facility to study how elements bind together with other minerals at the molecular level.

Cameco feels that these contributions reflect its belief that the university’s success is an integral component of community success. This success is not just local, but provincial and national.

The company also supports a range of scholarships, amateur sports events, arts and cultural pursuits, community festivals and training programs. In Saskatoon, for example, Cameco took the lead in the Royal University Hospital Foundation’s Royal Care campaign with a $1.5 million contribution which will fund several initiatives, including the first Chair in Aboriginal Medicine.

In Port Hope, Ontario, company donations helped expand the Public Library’s Local History Room and created the Cameco Room as part of the Capital Arts Centre restoration project.

Strengthening local economies is also part of community development. When an economic development summit was planned for the Athabasca region, Cameco was a co-sponsor. When Pinehouse was recognized as a leading northern community committed to sustainable economic development, part of the celebrations involved the recognition of 31 Cameco employees for their leadership in community achievement.

In 2004 Cameco launched its first employee giving campaign. The company matched eligible employee donations dollar-for-dollar, doubling the impact of the generosity of its staff. In five years more than $1.5 million has been raised in support of registered charities across Canada and the United States. Many Cameco employees help drive community fundraising campaigns, volunteering in a variety of capacities to help the organizations the company supports.

This dedication of company staff support combines with financial contributions to demonstrate the company’s commitment to be a good corporate citizen. Cameco strives to provide significant employment and economic benefits that come from its activities for communities near its operating sites.

Grandey sees this involvement in the community going hand-in-hand with the company’s commitment to be a strong environmental steward. “Environmental leadership is important because nuclear energy is increasingly seen as a clean source of abundant energy,” he said. “We want to make sure that our participation in the industry - from exploration to the generation of electricity - is both clean and sustainable.”

In tying this concern about protecting the environment with its commitment to communities near Cameco facilities, Grandey concluded, “our customers, communities, other stakeholders, and shareholders expect no less. Of course, we know that all human activity has impacts and our operations are no exception. The key is to constantly ask ourselves how we can do better.”

Canada And North America's Economic Recovery

Paving the Way through Energy Security & Clean Energy

These days a lot of people talk about how we live in challenging times. They’re not kidding, especially when by “challenging” they mean a freeze in international credit markets and a synchronized world economic slowdown. It’s no secret, we are in the middle of a global financial crisis, and when it comes to helping get the world economy back on track, Canada is all aboard.

Like the United States, Canada has already taken a number of actions to protect its own economy, which the International Monetary Fund predicted will continue to lead the G7 in financial growth in 2009. Canada is also committed to help stabilize global financial markets, restore credit flow and renew economic prosperity around the world. It will address these challenges by continuing to work closely with its G7, G8 and G20 partners, especially its neighbor, ally and number one trading partner the United States.

As part of this economic recovery strategy, Canada has made energy security and climate change top priorities. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama recently discussed these key issues and vowed to tackle them together during their meeting in Ottawa on February 19, 2009.

President Obama and Prime Minister Harper Establish Clean Energy Dialogue

Noting the long and productive history of bilateral cooperation on continental environmental protection and energy trade and technology, the President and the Prime Minister agreed that environmental protection and the development of clean energy are inextricably linked and announced plans to work together to build a new energy economy as a key element of broader economic recovery and reinvestment efforts.

The two leaders also discussed ways Canada and the United States could encourage the development of clean energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gases and combat climate change. These talks resulted in the establishment of a senior-level Canada-U.S. Clean Energy Dialogue that will cooperate on several critical energy science and technology issues. Priority initiatives identified include: expand clean energy research and development; develop and deploy clean energy technology; and build a more efficient electricity grid based on clean and renewable generation. In the weeks following the meeting, Canadian and U.S. officials will meet and officially launch this new Canada-U.S. initiative. (See “Canada-U.S. Initiative for Tackling Climate Change & Energy Security” for more details).

Canada - Number One Supplier of Energy to the United States

For a deeper understanding of how Canada fits into the energy and environment equation for North America, it’s important to know the role that Canada plays today. First, Canada is the largest energy supplier to the United States including oil, natural gas, uranium and electricity. In fact, the United States imports more oil from Canada than it does from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. And in 2007, Canada’s oil exports to the United States totaled more than $55 billion U.S., representing 2.4 million barrels per day.

Aside from its conventional oil and gas reserves, Canada’s oil sands in northern Alberta total an estimated 175 billion barrels of oil, which represents one of the largest sources of recoverable oil reserves in the world - second only to Saudi Arabia. Yet as technology and recovery techniques advance, the total oil reserves in Alberta’s oil sands are estimated to reach 1.7 trillion barrels, approximately four times the size of Saudi Arabia’s total reserves.

Roughly half of Canada’s crude oil exports to the United States are derived from Alberta’s oil sands, which provide a secure, dependable and long-term supply of oil for the North American market.

Canada’s Oil Sands and Sustainable Development Practices

Development of one of the world’s largest oil deposits brings both opportunities and issues. With such a huge energy resource come environmental challenges. To deal with these issues in a responsible and proactive manner, Canada is working with both provincial governments and the private sector to address how to secure the energy future in a way that is environmentally sound and sustainable. This involves balancing economic development with environmental and social responsibilities.

Production from Canadian oil sands is undertaken on a commercial basis in the context of transparent environmental regulatory and royalty regimes on greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide capture and storage, water use and land reclamation, as well as water and natural gas use. U.S. companies are among the leading firms engaged in oil sands production, and project proposals to develop oil sands deposits are subject to extensive environmental and regulatory review. These permits are only granted once environmental issues and First Nations’ concerns have been addressed.

Canada’s Commitment to Environmental Stewardship

Canada understands that economic prosperity cannot be sustained without a healthy environment, just as environmental progress cannot be achieved without a healthy economy. It has committed to reducing Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by at least 50% by 2050. Meeting those goals will ensure that Canada’s ongoing actions remain comparable to those our partners in the United States, Europe and other industrialized countries undertake.

In support of this ambitious national goal, Canada will continue to provide support for biofuels, wind and other energy alternatives and will also bring in legislation to ban all bulk water transfers or exports from Canadian freshwater basins. Canada will work with all parties in Parliament to introduce sensible policies that can help consumers and improve our environmental well-being, such as increasing incentives for energy-saving home retrofits.

In addition, Canada will work with the provincial governments and our partners to develop and implement a North America-wide cap and trade system for greenhouse gases and an effective international protocol for the post-2012 period. Canada will set an objective that 90 percent of its electricity needs to be provided by non-emitting sources - such as hydro, nuclear, clean coal or wind power - by 2020.

In early 2009, Canada’s Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice gave an address to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives reaffirming Canada’s commitment to environmental stewardship. During the speech, Minister Prentice stated that the Government of Canada has resolved to make national environmental policies positive instruments of economic renewal and of national development during this period of economic uncertainty. He also said that Canada is committed to helping achieve an effective multilateral climate change agreement for the years ahead. Canada will also continue working with the United States to pursue coordinated approaches to energy and environmental challenges that both face, which was further discussed during Prime Minister Harper’s and President Obama’s meeting.

Achieving these objectives will not be easy. But progress is being made on three concurrent tracks, including the previously mentioned Climate Change Policy that Canada introduced in 2007. As stated, this strategy sets a target to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions in Canada in 2020 by 20 percent from a 2006 starting point, also known as the minus 20 by 2020 approach.

While ambitious, Canada believes these target reductions in greenhouse gases are achievable - a promise to the global community that we think Canada will be able to keep. It’s a commitment that requires a greater effort of Canadians than the one proposed by the E.U. 27.

Going forward, Canada is developing a regulatory regime with mandatory targets that will apply to major industrial emitters

President Barack Obama spoke with clarity and determination about his commitment to environmental issues. The United States is re-engaging on multilateral climate change negotiations, creating the opportunity for a North American regulatory regime and a level playing field.

The Canadian Government looks forward to working with the Obama administration on energy security and environmental sustainability.

We will seek to ensure our federal policies are coordinated. We want federal climate change regulation to work in tandem with tax, tariff and technology policies, as well as all other policies that promote timely domestic investment.

Canada is also working to coordinate and harmonize federal and provincial governments and policies.

Concurrent with such measured movement in Canada, we hope to make progress internationally. In 2009, we will work with other countries to negotiate an effective multilateral climate change accord for the years ahead. Key meetings will take place in Bonn in early April and June, as well as in Italy at the June G-8 meeting. Finally, all roads will lead to the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009.

It is Canada’s hope that future climate change agreements will be effective. Climate change is a global problem and requires a global solution, which means all major emitters, developed and developing nations, need to be part of any new accord

Industrialized nations, to be sure, must be prepared to lead the charge provided all major emitters agree to follow, because if industrialized countries exercise leadership without emerging economies countries coming on board, real progress will not be made.

Climate change is a global problem and requires a global solution, which means all major emitters, developed and developing nations, need to be part of any new accord.

Moving forward, we need to ensure comparable efforts from all industrialized nations. We also need to secure meaningful participation from all emerging economies led by the “Big Five” of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and our NAFTA partner Mexico. We need to focus as well on the development and deployment of transformative clean technology and a concerted effort to produce and transmit a greater percentage of cleaner base-load power.

These are principles that Canada believes could and should form the basis of one shared commitment between Canada and the United States similar to the collective commitment of the European Union. A bilateral agreement could have shared targets and shared timetables, a common carbon market and price standard, and mandates that are based on science and common sense. But we think that the two countries need to go further and talk in terms of concrete action plans. Actions that will reduce not just greenhouse gas emission levels but North America’s dependence on foreign oil, such as the soon-to-be-launched Clean Energy Dialogue, established by President Obama and Prime Minister Harper.

Forty years ago, imported oil accounted for about 10 percent of the American market with Americans producing approximately 90 percent of their own consumption. Today that 10/90 ratio has become 60/40. By 2020, it will likely be at 80/20, because at current rates of production and exponential increases in consumption—SUVs and plasma TVs for example—proven U.S. oil reserves, like those of Mexico, are on course to be depleted just one decade from now. This means that by 2020, the United States will be as dependent on imported oil as E.U. nations.

So while Canada already plays a major role in the North American energy equation, we have the capacity to play an even larger role in the North American energy solution. We believe that working together we can reconcile energy and the environment and still have a secure and environmentally sustainable energy future for both our nations.

It is increasingly important that Canada plays a larger role in the North American energy security solution, when one considers the implications of oil scarcity and the political situations in Russia, Venezuela or the troubled Middle East. Considering these factors, Canada’s status as the world’s most reliable supplier of energy becomes not just an economic opportunity but also an obligation to our international partners and perhaps the single best way that we can contribute much-needed stability in an uncertain world.

Opportunity and obligation are why Canada needs to work with the United States in developing cooperative bilateral action plans. These joint strategies could include bringing northern gas to southern customers; clean technology roadmaps that would optimize the considerable expertise of both countries in areas such as carbon capture and storage; plans to expand clean power generation and transmission capacity here in North America or to interconnect the eastern and western regional power grids in North America; and actions that will help North America and the world make the transition from a high carbon present to a low carbon future while avoiding a disruptive and dislocative period involving no carbon en route.

Finally, as Canada gains traction domestically on approaches to dealing with energy security and environmental stewardship, we are able to make a credible commitment to the international community that Canada will play a key role in the effort to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. Canada will achieve this by also working with our neighbor and closest ally, the United States, in order to devise and execute a coordinated plan of action that will advance our environmental and our energy objectives and, at the same time, renew the North American economy.

Ambitious? Perhaps it is.

Achievable? We think so.

But of this I am certain: as North Americans, this is an agenda that is worth our very best efforts in the days ahead.

Dale Eisler (BA in Political Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus; MA in Political Science at Vermont College, Union Institute & University).

Prior to joining the Canadian Federal Government, Mr. Eisler had an extensive career in journalism, including daily newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, syndicated opinion columns, radio and television. He was also a sessional lecturer in journalism at the University of Regina.

In addition, Mr. Eisler was involved, at an ownership level, in private business for 13 years.

In 1998, he was appointed Assistant Deputy Minister for Consultations and Communications with the Department of Finance in the Government of Canada. In 2004, he was appointed Assistant Secretary to Cabinet (Communications and Consultations) at the Privy Council Office, which was the most senior communications position in the Canadian Government.

In 2006, Mr. Eisler was the recipient of the Saskatchewan Commemorative Medal in recognition of his contributions to the province and society. He is the author of two books, most recently False Expectations: Politics and the Pursuit of the Saskatchewan Myth, published by the University of Regina in 2006. Recently, he was awarded the University of Regina’s distinguished alumni award for professional achievement.

Dale Eisler and his wife Louise took up residence in Denver in November 2007. They have one daughter and one granddaughter.

Safeway

Investing In Our Environment

Becoming a leader: Not a follower

A business listed in the yellow pages as a grocery store does more than sell food and other household items. In 1915, M.B. Skaggs purchased a small store in his hometown of American Falls, Idaho. The goal was to give customers a value store and expand with a narrow profit margin. In 1926, his determination and drive enabled him to open 428 Skaggs grocery stores in 10 states. Later that year Skaggs struck a deal with Selig and merged into one company doubling in size and today is known as Safeway.

Today Safeway is in the business of “investing in our environment.” For over 82 years they have been dedicated to earning a reputation for honesty, integrity and fair play, since they were well aware that they were a major consumer of energy on an annual basis. Therefore, they decided that they needed to take necessary steps to be a leader in renewable & socially responsible energy use.

Since the public has become more conscious about the state of the environment consumers over the years have been demanding “environmental-accountability” from the suppliers of the goods and services they buy. Safeway wanted to meet these demands and have since branded themselves as a “good corporate practitioner.” They have managed to balance the field between making a profit, meeting obligations to shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers and sustaining the environment. Programs such as the Code of Business Conduct, recycling, sustainable energy, fuel efficiency, and the careful planning of expansion of their company have put Safeway in the forefront of large businesses that make a difference for the environment and the future.

The Code of Business Conduct: The Environmental Boot Camp

Before any environmental programs proceed, Safeway employees must buy-in. The belief “is that you should practice what you preach.” Since the company recognizes that the air, water, soil and vegetation should be kept as free as possible from negative impacts they have laid a set of guidelines that all new-hire and current employees must apply to their job - wherever and whenever possible. These guidelines state that employees must conduct business and operate facilities in an environmentally responsible manner; comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations; minimize waste and reduce pollution sources in stores and manufacturing and distribution facilities; minimize environmental liabilities in the acquisition and disposition of properties; and assist customers in utilizing sound environmental practices.

These guidelines are just a small part of the training the employees receive. They are provided with environmental modules in new employee orientation, retail leadership, and developmental and safety champions programs. There are also clean water compliance trainings on source reduction, recycling and environmental practices. “Power to Save” is a monthly education program on energy conservation that provides employees the tools to make a difference in their stores. And, employees can access a 24-hour online intranet site with numerous resources and training materials related to their job functions.

Education on safe environments doesn’t stop there. Safeway also aggressively tries to train and educate the public through public service announcements, which support state programs aimed at reducing energy in stores and support facilities.

Refuse and Reuse: The Recycling Program

The recycling program started with just cardboard in the 1960s and has turned into a 450,000 ton material a year business. The recycling program allows for solid waste to be diverted from landfills and reduces the cost of waste hauling and disposal, therefore saving the company millions of dollars each year. In addition, it helps cities and states meet the mandated reduction of solid waste that is put into landfills. In fact, in each of the California stores, they recycle approximately 85% of its solid waste, even though the states mandated solid waste reduction policy is 50%. Because the company well exceeded the state goal, California and the CIWMB (California Integrated Waste Management Board) presented Safeway with the Waste Reduction Award in 2005 and 2007.

Number Facts for 2007: Food for Thought

Corrugated Cardboard Recycling: 309,563 tons All cardboard is collected and sold to cardboard brokers. Plastics Recycling: 8,975 tons Customers can bring back plastic bags and plastic trays that are used to make parking lot bumpers and plastic lumber products. Composting: 92,891 tons Produce trimmings, unusable produce, waxed boxes, and bakery products are sent to a co mposting site where they are turned into soil products. Food Wastes: 65,981 tons Includes bread, dairy products, cooking oil fat & bone from the meat department are recycled into products like animal feed, supplements and biodiesel fuel. Miscellaneous Recycled Materials: 24,986 tons Aluminum, metals, paper, wood, batteries, oil & refrigerant are all recycled.

Overall, 502,396 tons were recycled in 2007. That is 386,000 cubic yards, enough to cover a football field and rise over 190 feet high.

The Future is Today: Sustainable Energy

The definition of sustainable energy is energy that in its production or consumption has minimal negative impacts on human health and the healthy functioning of vital ecological systems, including the global environment, and that can be supplied continuously to future generations on earth. In 2006, the Greenhouse Gas and Sustainability Initiative was created in a partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Climate registry. These partners, along with Safeway, were striving to reduce the amount of carbon released in the air and improve the quality of life. The goal was to reduce the amount of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 6% in California, and to maximize fossil fuel use reductions. This has aided the planning and construction of Safeway’s environmental management, operation, maintenance and infrastructure projects. Recently Safeway became the only company to join the Chicago Climate Exchange; which is the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary, legally binding GHG emissions reduction, registry and trading program.

Over the last few years, technology has supported the company in their effort to move forward by installing energy-efficient refrigeration and freezer systems, computer based and equipment control systems, improved heating, ventilation and air conditioning, wastewater neutralization, building improvements and LED lighting to reduce overall energy consumption.

Furthermore, Safeway has supported wind energy to offset the power used by their fuel stations and corporate offices. In fact, in 2008 Safeway unveiled two new solar-powered stores as part of an Earth Day celebration. Both stores are located in northern California and provide 20% of their average annual power and up to 48% at peak power from solar sources. Eventually Safeway’s plans are to have 23 solar driven stores that will remove 26 million pounds of CO2 from the air each year - the equivalent of taking more than 1,000 cars off the road annually.

Safeway’s plans are to have 23 solar driven stores that will remove 26 million pounds of CO2 from the air each year - the equivalent of taking more than 1,000 cars off the road annually.

Keep on Truckin’: Fuel Efficiency & Cleaner Air

Since 2006, Safeway has been an advocate and member of the EPA’s SmartWay Transport Partnership.

This move was the first of its kind by any major U.S. retailer. In addition to the fleet conversion, all of Safeway’s 48 underground storage tanks have met EPA standards.

The transition to biodiesel fuel did not happen overnight. Safeway used Smartway’s FLEET (Freight Logistics Environmental and Energy Tracking) to track and analyze their truck fleet during 2006 and created a baseline fuel efficiency study that implemented over a three-year window. The goal was to improve overall fuel efficiency performance. So far, the effort has saved the company almost 6.8 million gallons of diesel fuel and has prevented 75,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Moreover, Safeway saved over $19 million in fuel costs during 2007 with its shift to energy efficient fleets.

In 2008, Safeway made an aggressive and bold move that converted almost 1,000 fleet trucks to cleaner burning B-20 biodiesel fuel, which will reduce over 75 million pounds of CO2 annually.

To ensure that fleets run more efficiently, even the drivers of delivery trucks and other transportation vehicles are required to follow a set of stringent guidelines dedicated to fuel efficiency. These guidelines include adopting a five-minute idle policy which keeps drivers from running trucks unnecessarily during loading and unloading; purchasing tractors with an aerodynamic profile; using automatic tire-inflation systems to keep tires inflated at levels that maximize efficiency; using large-capacity trailers to limit the number of trips to stores; running route-optimization software to determine the most efficient delivery routes; and training drivers to more effectively shift gears to maximize engine performance.

Surveying the Field: Responsible Growth

Careful planning is key to the growth strategy at Safeway. They assess the impact of particular areas for development and the impact to the environment. Before the purchase or sale of land, environmental assessments are conducted to ascertain potential impacts to the land and the surrounding community.

Sustainable development is about creating environmentally responsible growth programs. It is a standard belief that setting a good example will open doors for others to follow. When it comes to business ethics, others judge us not by what we know but by what we do. Safeway is leading the charge in developing company-wide efforts to create sustainable, environmentally friendly business models. They are on the forefront of fleet conversion, building conversion, and training conversions. They are a model business citizen investing in our environment.

International Development Enterprise

"It’ll never work.” “Look at all of the failed international aid programs, the big anti-poverty programs. Maybe you can feed people, but every effort to change communities fundamentally seems to have failed.”

“When you pull one strand of the problem of poverty, the whole mess begins to unravel – what do you do when people have no education, when healthcare is unaffordable?”

“Even if you did figure out how to help people support themselves, wouldn’t they just deplete the natural resources in their region, causing even bigger problems down the road?”

Good thing for millions of people on three continents that Dr. Paul Polak didn’t see any of these arguments as a reason to stop innovating. Like any great entrepreneur, he merely saw them as hurdles to leap, bulldoze, or sidestep on the way to his ultimate goal: helping poor farmers build secure futures for themselves.

Trained as a psychiatrist, Polak worked for years to help people cope with mental illness through the Southwest Denver Mental Health Association. There he witnessed the inextricable link between poverty and mental health - and even created housing and jobs programs to help his patients. Then, on a trip to Belize, he became interested in poverty on the global level, poverty much deeper than what he witnessed in the United States. Because of his background in business, he saw poverty as a breakdown of the market system. When hardworking people had the right tools and access to the right markets, they could succeed in escaping poverty.

Driven to continue his investigation, Polak traveled to Nepal and Bangladesh and asked hundreds of people who lived on small farms - why are you poor? The obvious answer came: “We need more money.” And what would help you get more money? “Water.”

With regular access to water, farmers would be able to increase their incomes dramatically. And with improved incomes, they would have the resources to gain access to healthcare and education.

Upon consideration, Polak thought that there was something he could do about this. He grew up on a farm in Canada and thought that perhaps some inexpensive agricultural technologies could help. A treadle pump would allow farmers to access water from seven to ten feet below the ground. Simple drip irrigation systems that allowed for more direct delivery of water to plants would increase production, and allow for production of higher value crops.

But hadn’t similar efforts failed before? Rusting infrastructure brought in by big international aid programs molders in developing countries throughout the world.

What could make the difference in terms of adoption and use?

In 1981, Polak founded an organization called IDE (International Development Enterprises) to answer this question. The answer has come through applying market-based principles to the needs of the poor. For more than twenty-five years, IDE has gone directly to small communities and, through appropriate technologies and the seeding of small businesses, has developed sturdy and sustainable economies that are improving the lives of millions.

IDE recognizes a few key things based on simple business principles. It’s important that the farmers themselves have an investment in the new technology, and that the technology be affordable enough to pay off in one year’s harvest. It’s important that seeds, fertilizer, and replacement parts for the pumps and irrigation systems be available locally. And finally - no way out of poverty is sustainable if it depletes the natural resources of the region.

Building Local Markets

The typical IDE program works like this: in-country IDE workers go to a local marketplace and demonstrate a treadle pump or a drip irrigation system. They connect with farmers who might be interested in trying the technology, and arrange with partner organizations for them to receive a very small loan to pay for the technology. Let’s say a farmer buys a treadle pump. He would receive a loan of about $20 to pay for the pump, and IDE would provide connections to local well drillers, information about the best agronomic practices, and links to local markets where he can earn fair prices. The farmer uses the pump to irrigate his crops and increase his yield. He takes his crops to market, sells them, and can earn up to 300% more than he would have in previous years. He is able to pay off his loan, and is on the way to economic self-sufficiency.

Panchagarh, Bangladesh – With the income from the chili, amaranth, radish, and potato grown using her IDE treadle pump, Rashida Begum has been able to support her family of five, and open a successful retail shop as well.

With increased income, the farmer’s life and that of his or her family can be transformed. Nazrul Islam of Bangladesh used his increased profits to keep all of his children in school. “I hope that one of my sons will go on to school in Dhaka and get a good government job,” he says. His additional income has also allowed his daughters to remain in school, which is uncommon in his village.

But IDE doesn’t stop there. As they build relationships with farmers like Islam, they also build relationships with entrepreneurs, craftsmen, and agricultural suppliers. Their goal is to create a sustainable market system in a community, where the pumps and irrigation systems, seeds and organic fertilizers are all produced and sold locally. They also stimulate markets for higher quality, higher profit crops by providing connections to broader distribution systems.

With certain pump models at just $20 apiece and drip systems as low as $5, the question arises: why not just give this technology to the farmers? IDE USA Executive Director Zenia Tata explains, “Our studies show that rates of adoption are much higher when farmers invest their own money. They are also more likely to properly maintain the equipment when they have ownership. Treating smallholder farmers as customers is a respect issue. Rather than deciding for them what they should have, we allow our customers to make the decision about whether our products have significant value for them.”

The Key is Sustainability

From central offices in Lakewood, Colorado, IDE runs in-country programs in eight developing countries in Asia and Africa, and operates affiliates in Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. Since its founding in 1981, IDE has helped an estimated 17 million people pull themselves permanently out of poverty and to do so in an environmentally sustainable way.

With millions of farmers using more water and planting more crops, it might seem that the natural resources of the regions where IDE works could be depleted. In fact, the opposite is true. “IDE’s anti-poverty programs are deeply rooted in sustainable design and environmental practices,” explains Andy Vermouth, IDE Communications Director. “Because our systems are so widely spread on smallholder farms throughout a region, they haven’t affected the water table or the surrounding environment the way a large scale irrigation scheme would.” Studies conducted in association with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have found that, because IDE promotes the use of organic fertilizer and drip irrigation, along with other water-saving technologies, agricultural run-off is significantly decreased in areas where IDE technologies are at work.

“If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers - most of whom are women,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “These investments - from improving the quality of seeds, to developing healthier soil, to creating new markets - will pay off not only in children fed and lives saved. They can have a dramatic impact on poverty reduction as families generate additional income and improve their lives.” The Gates Foundation recently awarded $40 million in grants to IDE for projects throughout Asia and Africa.

Obstacles and Opportunities

IDE has achieved its success through focusing on a few key technologies, genuinely listening to the people in the countries it serves, and developing market systems that sustain themselves and preserve the environment. Major foundations like Gates and the Mennonite Economic Development Agency, along with international development agencies in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia provide a steady stream of investment capital to seed projects around the world. Individual donors also play a part, since it costs only about $250 to raise a family out of poverty through IDE’s programs.

IDE is also seeking corporate partners who can help bring the global marketplace to small farmers. “In Nicaragua, IDE partnered with Nestlé and ECOM to create a market link for premium coffee produced by small farmers there using our drip irrigation technology,” says Tata, “and we’re getting great results. We’re looking for other corporate partners who are interested in working with us to create innovative, sustainable solutions to the problem of poverty.”

What prevents IDE from moving even faster to implement its successful model throughout the developing world? Vermouth cites political strife as one key obstacle. “We have people in both Myanmar and Zimbabwe, where the political situations are tenuous,” he explains. “This can make our work difficult, but our presence there can also be a blessing.” IDE’s in-country workers were among the very few people able to distribute aid to victims of the Myanmar cyclone last year.

IDE is proud of its success internationally, Vermouth notes, but they also hope to connect the power of their methods to local projects in Colorado. Last summer, he created a demonstration plot in a Denver Urban Gardens site, and despite planting the garden later than others, it still produced more than neighboring plots due to the benefits of micro-irrigation. “We hope to share what we’ve learned in developing countries here in Denver. This year we’re working with several local groups to promote a showcase village that demonstrates some of our technologies and by extension how they might be applied by others here in the U.S.”

While the economic downturn certainly challenges some of their funding streams, IDE continues to forge ahead with its programs, hoping to reach millions more people in need in the years ahead. “Because the systems we create are environmentally and fiscally sound,” Vermouth explains, “our work fits perfectly with the emphasis on a move to an economy based on sustainable development.”

For more information please check IDE’s website at www.ideorg.org

Rebecca Arno is Vice President of Communications for The Denver Foundation, a community foundation serving the seven-county Metro Denver area.

Engines & Energy Conversion Labs

Investing in Innovation & Improving Efficiencies

Don’t be fooled by the name: Students, faculty and staff working on any given day in the Colorado State University (CSU) Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL) aren’t working on engines per se.

Improving engine efficiency is certainly within the scope of work at the lab, but students - under the tutelage of the lab’s director, Dr. Bryan Willson - are working on global solutions such as systems that will produce biodiesel from algae on a massive scale and cookstoves that will help curb indoor air pollution in developing nations.

The laboratory is the largest of its kind in North America at one of the top research institutions in the nation (CSU ranks fourth in annual research expenditures in the nation when compared with its peers without a medical school, according to the most recent figures from the National Science Foundation). The mission of the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory is to “create innovative energy solutions and entrepreneurial models that benefit the human condition and achieve global impact.”

That mission coincides with the university’s mission and that of its new Superclusters – a business model that was enacted in 2007 to bring the university’s innovative research to the marketplace more quickly.

Applying Michael Porter’s concept of business clusters, the Superclusters are organized around the university’s areas of strength such as clean energy solutions and cures and vaccines for infectious disease and cancer.

Translated into a university setting, the cluster concept helps scientists in different disciplines come together to work on common goals while also helping industry navigate the complexities of a university for licensing and patenting. The goal is to make the university look and act more like a business and encourage public/private partnerships and collaboration.

“Superclusters are designed around the idea that we can pull together a critical mass of faculty in an area where Colorado State University has strong expertise; we can leverage those strengths in developing solutions to address challenges facing societies worldwide,” said Interim President Dr. Tony Frank. “We oriented these Superclusters around areas where the solution could be addressed for commercialization – taking the ideas, the intellectual property, the innovation that comes out of groups of scientists and students from across disciplines and translating it into the commercial space for the public good.”

Collaboration is key to innovation at Colorado State University, including the groundbreaking work occurring in the engines lab. Willson, the lab’s director, also doubles as the Director of the academic side of the Clean Energy Supercluster. His role is to help connect researchers across campus who may be working in the area of clean energy.

Willson himself helped create two of the university’s spinoffs: Envirofit International, a company that is helping poorer countries solve indoor and outdoor air pollution problems, and Solix Biofuels, which aims to develop algae into biodiesel on a mass scale.

“When I’m giving tours of the lab, I like to tell people that the next round of breakthroughs in energy are going to happen where more than one discipline intersect,” said Dr. Morgan DeFoort, co-director of the engines lab. “It’s not going to be a physicist working alone. It’s the physicist working with the chemist. Or the biologist working with the mechanical engineer. It’s the more complex problems – those are where the breakthroughs for the next few decades – even the next century – are going to occur.”

Engineering Complex Systems

The EECL at Colorado State is known for tackling large, complex environmental problems such as air pollution – issues that relief agencies around the world don’t have the funds or the time to address. Willson, the founder of the lab, often says, “the bigger the problems, the better.”

The first major breakthrough to occur at the engines lab was in 1999. That was the first year that students competed in the SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge, ultimately developing a snowmobile that was 300 times cleaner than a stock model. In 2003, students Tim Bauer and Nathan Lorenz, along with Willson and Paul Hudnut, business instructor, took that innovation to the next level and created Envirofit International, a non-profit corporation and leader in creating sustainable, scalable businesses that help solve global health and environmental problems.

Envirofit developed a bolt-on, direct-injection retrofit kit for carbureted two-stroke engines that are major polluters in the developing world. This easily installed, direct-injection retrofit technology drastically reduces pollution by 70 to 90 percent while improving fuel economy more than 35 percent.

Those two-stroke engine retrofit kits are being sold in the Philippines with expansion planned in other developing countries.

Lorenz and Bauer, the two students who helped create Envirofit, now work for the company and have helped steer the business into another major area of concern in the developing world: indoor air pollution.

Envirofit has developed a cleaner burning cookstove that reduces emissions while using less fuel and increasing efficiency. The stoves are now being disseminated throughout India as students in the engines lab continue to work on improving the technology.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 3 billion people - or nearly half the world’s population - cook their daily meals over open fires indoors using biomass such as wood or dung. A majority of the heat is wasted, and up to 20 percent of the biomass is transferred into such toxic materials as carbon monoxide, benzene and formaldehyde. Indoor air pollution, as a result, kills 1.6 million people every year.

In 2006, the Shell Foundation committed up to $25 million in grants to Envirofit to design and disseminate 10 million cookstoves across the developing world. Stoves are already being delivered in India.

EECL Saving Lives

To meet Envirofit’s goal to disseminate the stoves, the company is working with DeFoort and his students at the EECL to perfect the technology. As many as 40 or 50 students work in the lab at any given time – most of them undergraduate students – on a variety of different projects.

Christian L’Orange, a graduate student in the laboratory, works with DeFoort, who is the technical lead on the research and development efforts that support Envirofit’s cookstoves enterprise. DeFoort has four graduate students and six undergraduate students working with him.

Through Envirofit and his work in the lab, L’Orange has learned that engineering offers a multitude of career paths. He’s responsible for designing the test hood in India that measures stove emissions.

“It’s engineers that are doing something different,” L’Orange said of the lab. “Being an engineer doesn’t just mean that you’re designing gears or cars or robots. Working with Envirofit – it was the first project that anyone had talked about that was completely different.” Being an engineer doesn’t just mean that you’re designing gears or cars or robots.

And the differences don’t stop there: Students at CSU are learning what it means to collaborate with their peers in other disciplines. They’re working with business professors such as Hudnut who are helping to build new business models to sell such products as Envirofit’s to people in poor nations who need them. Or with sociocultural anthropologists, like Mac McGoldrick, Programs Manager for the EECL, who is helping students learn to appreciate cultural differences that will help Envirofit sell their products.

“There’s a unique, collaborative culture that exists at Colorado State because of our ability to be entrepreneurial,” DeFoort said. “You find that willingness to collaborate here more than at any other university.”

Students Learning from Collaboration

Collaborative experiences are also creating new entrepreneurs: Some of the first seed funding from the Clean Energy Supercluster helped a group of students in the College of Business’ newest master’s program create a new company.

Through the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise master’s degree program, students have created Powermundo, which is a for-profit organization that aims to connect sustainable products of companies such as Envirofit with the people in developing nations who need them. The students are working with Tom Dean, a Business Professor, and DeFoort.

The master’s degree is an 18-month program that teaches students to use entrepreneurial, sustainable approaches to address great global challenges of poverty, environmental degradation and poor health. The degree requires three months of field work in a developing nation or area that lacks resources to build sustainable businesses.

The goal of the master’s degree program is ultimately to help some of the world’s three billion people who live on less than $3 a day.

“Though the Clean Energy Supercluster is really young, here’s an example of how it’s investing across the spectrum,” DeFoort said. “We have these students who have launched a company and they were greatly enabled by Supercluster funding. The Supercluster spans the spectrum from early stage R&D to later-stage commercialization.”

Colorado State University – and companies like Envirofit – are capitalizing on these opportunities ahead of other higher education institutions, DeFoort said.

“There aren’t Envirofits out there,” he said. “The approach in the developing world has only recently turned entrepreneurial. We’ve got a five-year headstart.”

To learn more about the Colorado State University Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory and its successful startup companies, please visit http://www.eecl.colostate.edu/ or contact Emily Wilmsen at (970) 491-2336. For more information about Colorado State University’s leadership in renewable energy and environmentally sustainable initiatives, go to http://www.green.colostate.edu/.

Controlling Climate Change

Washington No Longer Asking “Why” But “How?”

It’s progress of a sort. Policymakers in Washington now seem determined to address climate change, if not this year then probably next.

Now the tougher question is, how?

President Obama noted there are “a number of different ways to go after this problem,” but they essentially boil down to three. Congress and the Administration can tax carbon dioxide (CO2) and create an incentive not to produce it. They can reduce CO2 by federal regulation – a command-and-control approach in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would set an emission limit for each broad category of industrial source. Or they can control CO2 with a European-style cap-and-trade system.

No option is perfect; all will be expensive, with estimates rising into a trillion dollars or more. But the betting in Washington is that a cap-and-trade system, already a part of the Kyoto Treaty in Europe, is the best way to reduce emissions and cost to consumers and industries.

Under cap-and-trade, government essentially would “cap” total CO2 emissions. Power plants that reduce their emissions below this ceiling could “trade” or sell CO2 allowances to plants that cannot reduce theirs. By limiting the number of allowances available to power plants and other sources of emissions, cap-and-trade essentially puts a price on emitting CO2 and thus provides an incentive for reducing this greenhouse gas. Plants wouldn’t need to buy allowances if they reduce their share of CO2 below the ceiling. electricity

In theory the market for trading allowances will lead to the most efficient reductions. As companies find ways to get “under the cap,” they can sell rather than buy emissions allowances, giving them an added incentive to innovate.

Another advantage of cap-and-trade is that some of the revenue collected from allowance sales can be used to finance the costly technologies capable of reducing power plant emissions. The Obama Administration suggests we need as many as five of these advanced power plants to demonstrate how so-called carbon capture and storage technology would work. This technology has not yet been tried on the scale needed for power plants, but experts from the International Energy Agency to professors at MIT insist it is essential for controlling global warming. That’s because most greenhouse gas emissions no longer come from rich countries like ours, but from fast-growing developing countries unwilling to develop the expensive technology themselves.

Finally, cap-and-trade has the advantage of setting a firm limit on emissions. With the emissions ceiling in place, companies can decide how best to get under it without being told by bureaucrats in Washington, and environmentalists would know that greenhouse gases would be reduced by a set amount.

Alternatively, a direct tax on carbon would also lead to reduced CO2 emissions. Making something more expensive typically reduces its use. And by making the carbon price certain, tax advocates say it would help to make business conditions more certain, too. But tax critics warn of the loopholes and complexity that would inevitably accompany any attempt to tax every source of CO2 – from the corner drycleaner to the municipal power plant. And the administrative overhead needed to manage such a vast new tax would itself be very costly, perhaps rivaling the IRS.

The third option for reducing CO2 emissions, federal regulation, appears to be the least attractive. EPA may soon take steps to regulate carbon emissions, placing responsibility for an enormously complex and expensive mandate in the hands of unelected technicians. These bureaucrats are unlikely to understand, let alone appreciate, the differing regional impacts caused by reductions in carbon-heavy fuels. Southern and Midwestern states that rely heavily on coal, for example, would suffer from higher electricity costs, while coastal states would feel relatively little impact.

Regulation also seems the poorer option because the Clean Air Act is a crude tool for regulating a pervasive gas like CO2. Congress never intended the Act, now more than 40 years old, to cast such a broad regulatory net over virtually the entire fossil energy economy.

Representative John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who has long championed the interests of the auto industry, said EPA regulation of CO2 could set off a “glorious mess” felt nationwide. Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso warned that using the Clean Air Act to address climate change would be a “disaster waiting to happen.”

So expect Washington to finally grapple with climate change. Just don’t expect this to happen very quickly.

Luke Popovich is Vice President, External Communications at the National Mining Association.

Biomass To Energy

Range Fuels Invents Low-Carbon, Renewable Fuel

In the United States, vehicles use more gasoline each year than the entire U.S. oil industry produces. Fleets and personal vehicles are ultimately responsible for most of the pollution and damage caused by the oil extraction industry. As the U.S. actively tries to alleviate its dependence on foreign oil, many groundbreaking new fuel solutions have surfaced. Many argue that U.S. energy independence can never be achieved. Then, there are those who vehemently believe that the solution to the imported oil problem, and its inherent threats, could be just around the corner.

Realistically, it will take time to solve a problem that has perpetuated itself over decades, but David Aldous, an energy industry veteran and CEO of Range Fuels, believes it can. He says,

He goes on, “Clean fuels create a significant economic opportunity for the U.S. It brings independence and security to the U.S. with a clean fuel supply. It also creates jobs and mitigates a substantial transfer of wealth out of the U.S.”

Cellulosic Biofuels: The Zero Carbon-Footprint Fuel

“Addressing climate change is important. It is no longer a debate about the science anymore, but a discussion on what we are going to do to address it.”

Concern about the environmental and political costs of our nation’s 140 billion–gallon a year gasoline addiction has never been higher. Recent polls have found that 91 percent of Americans believe our nation is facing an energy crisis and 86 percent say they want their government to help develop alternative energy sources.

In the U.S., transportation is the largest single source of air pollution - producing nearly two-thirds of the carbon monoxide, a third of the nitrogen oxides, and a quarter of the hydrocarbons in our atmosphere. Transportation consumes nearly 21 billion barrels of oil annually – of which 60 percent is imported.

Addressing these concerns will take time, however, many companies are developing and introducing fuel alternatives – biofuels and other clean burning fuels derived from non-food biomass sources - that could cut emissions significantly and quickly.

Denver-based Range Fuels has created a low-carbon fuels company focused on the production of cellulosic ethanol that considers… “Everything we do, everything we use, and everything we create is evaluated by one simple question: have we taken no more than we have returned?”

Range Fuels’ fuel-grade ethanol, one of the company’s renewable fuel products, is targeted specifically at the transportation industry.

The company converts biomass – from plant and plant-derived materials such as wood, switch grass, corn stover, and even olive pits - using clean energy technologies, to produce ethanol that has no net greenhouse gas effects.

Furthermore, their plants are expected to use less water than typical corn ethanol plants.

The company produces cellulosic biofuels using its proprietary two-step thermo-chemical process which uses heat, pressure, and steam to convert biomass into synthesis gas or syngas. The syngas is then passed over a proprietary catalyst to ultimately create ethanol for blending with gasoline as a transportation fuel, methanol and other alcohols.

The company’s approach to building facilities near biomass sources minimizes transportation energy from the equation. This is the case with Range Fuels’ first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant located near Soperton, Georgia, which is positioned near significant and sustainable supplies of wood and wood waste. This plant will initially use wood and leftover wood residues from nearby timber operations. Construction on the first phase of the plant is expected to be completed in early 2010 with operations following in the second quarter of 2010. At full capacity, the Soperton Plant is permitted to produce over 100 million gallons of ethanol and methanol annually.

Petroleum to Biofuels: The Challenges and Potential Benefits

Range Fuels Soperton Plant, Soperton, Georgia Recently, the Natural Resources Defense Council suggested that, “by 2050, biofuels – especially those known as cellulosic biofuels – could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 1.7 billion tons per year.” That’s equal to more than 80 percent of current transportation-related emissions or the equivalent of more than three times as much oil as we currently import from the Persian Gulf. And if combined with better vehicle efficiency and smart-growth urban planning, biofuels could virtually eliminate our demand for gasoline over the next 35 – 40 years.

And because ethanol does not need to be drilled or pumped, it leaves America’s coasts and wildlands unscathed. It is produced from fully renewable and fully sustainable resources – a fuel we can find at home and recover from our own fields, forests, and farmlands, or even from our own garbage dumps.

However, ethanol’s critics have suggested that demand for the fuel could outstrip the agricultural land available to grow the corn to make it. That objection vanishes when cellulosic sources are factored in.

Additionally, energy crops grown to produce cellulosic ethanol yield two to three times more biomass per acre than corn. That means far less land is needed to produce far more cellulosic ethanol. Researchers from the Rocky Mountain Institute explain it this way: “Cellulosic ethanol will typically have twice the ethanol yield of corn-based ethanol, at lower capital cost, with far better net energy yield.”

Another challenge facing expansion of the biofuels industry rests with the lack of availability of vehicles capable of using higher blends of ethanol with gasoline (E85 or a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline), and the lack of infrastructure to deliver E85 to the market. There are approximately 240 million cars in the U.S., but only about six million, or a little more than 2%, are “flex-fuel” or “dual-fuel” vehicles, which can run on both conventional gasoline and E85. And, because only about 1% of the filling stations in the U.S. offer E85 (1,900 of approximately 170,000 filling stations), access to E85 for those with flex-fuel vehicles is limited.

Although E85 availability is limited, research indicates that the impact of E85 use on greenhouse gas emissions is impressive. Fueling a car with E85 with the ethanol made from corn reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, according to studies by Argonne National Laboratory. However, the benefits will increase as larger amounts of ethanol are produced from cellulosic sources, such as agricultural waste that is currently burned or left to decompose.

A joint U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Agriculture study completed in 2005 estimated that the nation’s forest and agricultural lands could sustainably produce 1.3 billion tons of biomass each year – enough to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of the demand for transportation fuels.

Furthermore, when compared to other alternative fuel processes - like sugar platforms - the thermo-chemical conversion process Range Fuels utilizes to convert non-food biomass into cellulosic biofuels has a number of value-added features including lower front-end processing costs, greater conversion efficiencies, greater feedstock flexibility, lower water consumption, faster process time, and fewer by-products.

The Economy & Biofuels

When E85 with cellulosic ethanol is used, cellulosic ethanol can reduce greenhouse gas emissions per vehicle mile traveled by 89 percent.

Right now, the U.S. economy is something of a detriment to many companies in the “new energy” sector, In fact, access to capital, federal grants, and the credit crunch have caused a slowdown in construction within the industry due to lack of capital. Aldous says, “Even though there is interest in our technologies outside of the U.S. by energy importers, we are only focused on a national plan due to limited funding sources.”

Range Fuels is on a journey to dominate the biomass to energy business by creating a cost competitive, low-carbon fuel alternative to gasoline. It is not an experimental or theoretical technology.

Ethanol is a burgeoning American industry that has already attracted a high level of investment and ingenuity. It recycles waste, revitalizes agriculture, and reduces air pollution. It can help us reverse global warming and achieve energy independence. Ethanol is ready to power the engine of environmental and economic sustainability.

All we have to do is put it in our cars and drive off into the future.

The President's Economic Recovery Plan

An Opportunity for Conservation

A national economic crisis might not seem to be the time for Americans to build a conservation legacy for the future.

But history tells us otherwise. In fact, some of the greatest strides in conserving our nation’s unique landscapes for future generations occurred during times of war and economic crisis.

In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the first legislation setting aside the beautiful Yosemite Valley in California as a protected area. The idea of a national park was born, and today we have 391 units in our National Park System.

During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps and put hundreds of thousands of young people to work at national parks and on other public lands, planting trees, constructing roads and visitor facilities, and undertaking a wide swath of other projects.

Americans today still benefit from this work done in the 1930s. For example, the Corps constructed the breathtaking “Going to the Sun” Road in Glacier National Park and the 105-mile Skyline Drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park.

The president’s economic recovery package illustrates the old adage that crisis and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. The president’s economic recovery package illustrates the old adage that crisis and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. America now faces the worst economic crisis since those dark years of the Great Depression. We can use this as an opportunity to make an investment in conserving America’s timeless treasures – our stunning natural landscapes, our monuments to liberty, the icons of our culture and heritage - while helping working families and their communities prosper again.

Once again, we have an opportunity to put people to work on conservation projects to renew our national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands.

The economic recovery package passed by Congress includes badly needed funding for projects at the Department of the Interior. It will create as many as 100,000 new jobs in communities across America.

This funding would allow for investment in projects that could be undertaken immediately on our public lands across the country.

In central California, for example, the National Park Service would finally be able to make long overdue upgrades to important infrastructure and invest in improved fire protection at the Ash Mountain Complex at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. These projects would repair and rebuild $13.8 million in basic park infrastructure, such as replacing water tanks and installing new fire alarms. They will stimulate the economy by providing business for contractors and suppliers, and generating jobs in the local community. Equally important, the projects will provide a safer, healthier experience for the more than 900,000 people who visit the Ash Mountain complex each year.

Or in Colorado, for example, the recovery package will provide more than $3.8 million to help restore our national wildlife refuges and national parks. The investments will go to fixing fences, rebuilding roads, and improving interpretive facilities at the Baca, Alamosa, and Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuges. At Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, the economic recovery plan will allow the National Park Service, among other projects, to reclaim abandoned sand and gravel pits near the beautiful Sand Creek, so that we can help restore native trout to the park.

Yes, we are in a time of crisis. But yes,

Americans are proud to have the finest network of public lands dedicated to conservation and recreation in the world. The recovery legislation provides the opportunity to make our national heritage even more grand for our children and grandchildren.

We must not – and will not - miss it.

Great Groups Guru

GREAT GROUPS GURU: Warren Bennis

Warren G. Bennis believes that very few great accomplishments are the work of a single person – but are a compilation of personalities and skill sets of the collective group. As one of the world’s foremost authorities on positive change, powerful partnerships and group leadership, he shares great insights into how to harness the power of Great Groups.

In fact, to identify common traits of Great Groups, Bennis studied legendary groups including Lockheed’s Skunkworks, the Xerox PARC research center, and Apple’s original Macintosh team. He found that every Great Group is extraordinary in its own way, and that there are common principles that apply to them. In my opinion, these principles apply to many of the organizations that we have featured in ICOSA.

Principle #1

Every Great Group has a superb leader

According to Bennis, Great Groups all have strong leaders, but the groups made the leaders great - that’s the paradox of group leadership. I believe the epitome of this principle is Ed Rust and State Farm Insurance. This organization is a leader in the insurance business, but serves as a role model for social development and support through education and community development. Rust is the leader who keeps his eye on the horizon, and not just on the bottom line.

Principle #2

Great Groups think they are on a mission from God.

Dr. James Jackson and Dr. Douglas Jackson of Project C.U.R.E. are on that shared mission - securing and delivering donated medical supplies and equipment to the most desperately ill and needy people in more than 100 countries around the world. They are on a fervent quest to create a better life for the poorest of the poor.

Principle #3

Great Groups manage conflict by abandoning individual egos to the pursuit of the dream.

This principle is difficult for most of us. However, the collaborative efforts of Regis University and Beth Parish have taught us to not only reach out to the whole community, but to work humbly behind the scenes to pull engaging and sometimes challenging, people to the collaboration effort.

Principle #4

Great Groups view themselves as winning underdogs

The story of Greyston Bakeries demonstrates this principle. Having created a social enterprise defined by creating profits to advance a social mission, Greyston has employed the “unemployable.” Greyston has built relationships with the best in the industry. Greyston has built a model filled with purpose - one that recognizes that, “We all have equal value, just different skill sets.”

Principle #5

Great Groups are protected from the “suits.”

Boeing’s story in our inaugural issue exemplifies this principle. In order to survive, the A&T group took drastic measures and made sweeping organizational changes in order to make their partnership with the U.S. Airforce and McDonnell Douglas succeed. Instead of another top down “initiative du jour” or “random acts of improvement,” the Great Group at Boeing worked tactically and quietly to cultivate an environment built on integration, alignment, coordination, and communication while avoiding unreasonable expectations, secrets, and static documents.

Principle #6

Great Groups pay a personal price.

Bringing hope to Yetebon, Ethiopia is the passion of Noel and Tammy Cunningham and their work with Project Mercy. Working tirelessly, with a team of devoted volunteers, the Cunningham Foundation and Project Mercy work hard to build and sustain better healthcare, feeding centers, and scholarships for children in the region. The mission: “Dream big! Maybe big things will happen.”

Principle #7

Great Groups are the product of meticulous recruiting.

John Brackney of the South Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce understands that connecting the best leaders and organizations brings in more great groups and leaders, which creates a powerful interconnected web. Common sense dictates, if you want to have a great group, surround yourself with great people.

Principle #8

Great Groups are usually young or think young.

Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary and founder of Operation Respect has had one of the longest successful musical careers (that all the baby boomers appreciate), but his current message appeals to the young. Recently, Peter authored a best selling children’s book Puff the Magic Dragon - and a song that almost any ten-year-old child can sing.

Principle #9

Great Groups have a real or invented enemy.

Groups do better when there is a real or invented enemy - such as the ongoing battle against disease and sickness. In our inaugural issue we highlighted the efforts of Poudre Valley Health Systems and their ongoing continuous improvement journey to save lives. Since that issue, the organization has received the highest quality recognition in the U.S. - the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Proof of just one of PVHS’ Great Groups is the community case management program that pairs advance practice nurses and social workers with high-risk, chronically ill patients. Over the past three years, this group has decreased emergency visits annually by 50 percent, which has resulted in more than $850,000 in savings.

Principle #10

Real Artists Ship.

Producing a tangible outcome external to self is central to this principle. Cheryl Jensen and the efforts of SWAG and the Vail Veterans Program are prime examples. These Great Groups come together annually to make the world better – either by sending a warm coat or showing a wounded veteran that someone cares - and that is the point.

Bennis inspires my work as a CEO, publisher, Great Group leader and participant. “It is the power of the mission,” reflects Bennis, “where all great teams – and all great organizations – are built around a shared dream or motivating purpose”

In fact, Great Groups remind us how much we can accomplish working toward a shared purpose. Great Groups rely on many long-established practices of good management – effective communication, good recruitment, genuine empowerment, and personal commitment.

Bennis reminds us of the author Luciano de Crescanzo’s observation that “we are all angels with only one wing; we can only fly while embracing one another.” And, then Bennis reiterates that, “in the end, Great Groups can not be managed, only led in flight.”